The New York Times is reporting that several of their reporters have been subpoenaed by the Trump DOJ over an apparent leak about the new Qatari-given Air Force One and the switch back to the old Air Force One for one leg of the trip.
They explain below:
The Trump administration issued subpoenas on Friday to several journalists for The New York Times, after the news outlet reported this week on security concerns involving President Trump’s new Qatari-donated Air Force One.
The subpoenas — which seek to force the reporters to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan on Wednesday — were an extraordinary escalation in President Trump’s efforts to threaten and intimidate independent news organizations.
In some cases, the subpoenas were delivered by federal agents who showed up at reporters’ homes.
The subpoenas contain few specifics, asking only that the journalists testify “in regard to an alleged violation of federal criminal law.” They were issued by Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan. Mr. Clayton, who leads one of the country’s most prominent law enforcement offices, was recently nominated by Mr. Trump to serve as director of national intelligence.
Representatives for the White House and the U.S. attorney in Manhattan did not immediately respond to inquiries on Friday evening.
The Times journalists who received subpoenas included Julian E. Barnes, Eric Lipton, Tyler Pager and Eric Schmitt, who reported on Wednesday that Mr. Trump had departed Turkey on the old Air Force One as a security precaution at the urging of the Secret Service. On Thursday, The Times reported that the new Air Force One, a Qatari-donated Boeing 747-8, lacked some of the advanced security features of the older aircraft, including antimissile capabilities. Both articles cited sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security issues.
Before the Wednesday article was published, a senior official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation contacted The Times to ask that the article be held, calling it an issue of national security, according to a person familiar with the conversation. The F.B.I. official spoke with a reporter and a senior editor in The Times’s Washington bureau; the official declined to explain the security issue when asked.
I would hate to think the new AF1 isn’t outfitted with better missile defense technology than the old one. If that’s the real reason Trump switched planes, and then it was leaked by someone to the New York Times, then I don’t blame the administration one bit for trying to get to the bottom of this leak.