The Trump administration is not just seeking phone records of The New York Times journalists, it is even trying to subpoena the records of family members, newly unsealed court documents reveal.
The documents show that the administration’s probe into the Times for its reporting on Trump’s Qatar-donated Air Force One jet was much more extensive than initially portrayed.
According to a letter from Times lawyers seeking to quash the requests, the Department of Justice sought information on the phone numbers of two of the journalists’ spouses, one of whom is a general counsel at a top law firm. They also sought the phone number of one journalist’s mother, who works as a mental health professional and has “confidential client relationships.”
The subpoenas for phone records follow another set of subpoenas issued earlier this month that tried to force the reporters to testify before a federal grand jury.
The Times, citing anonymous sources, reported that the $400 million Qatari Boeing 747-8 lacked some of the same defensive measures as the older aircraft, including not having proper antimissile capabilities. Those concerns, amid the president’s rapidly escalating war in Iran, prompted the Trump White House to swap the new jet for the old jet to fly Trump back from Turkey to Washington, D.C. earlier this month.
According to the Times, the subpoenas are vague, asking only that the journalists testify “in regard to an alleged violation of federal criminal law.”
The Times lawyer David McCraw has called the move a “brazen act,” and said it “should be seen as nothing more than an attempt to prevent the public from knowing what is happening in their country by intimidating journalists from doing their jobs.”
“The appearance of federal law enforcement agents on the doorstep of news reporters should shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution and the press freedom it protects,” McCraw said when the subpoenas were issued last week.
On Sunday, however, the president appeared to confirm the Times reporting, when he told reporters that the jet was being taken out of service for a month for additional service.
“It has a lot of capability, but as I understand it, in about a month or so, they’re going to send it to have it be maxed out,” he said on the tarmac of Joint Base Andrews.
The Trump administration’s move with The New York Times is only their latest attempt at stifling the press over coverage the administration views as unfavorable.
Last year, former Attorney General Pam Bondi, who Trump canned in April, revoked Biden-era press protections, effectively allowing the Justice Department to resume using subpoenas and search warrants on reporters as the government investigates apparent leaks.
The president has sued numerous media outlets, including ABC News, CBS News, The New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal over reporting he finds unsavory. His administration has also threatened to revoke TV broadcast licenses, with the administration particularly focused on ABC’s The View.
There is also the dispute between dozens of news outlets, including conservative outlets, and the Defense Department over reporters’ access to the Pentagon, policies that have prompted The New York Times to file two lawsuits against the department.
FBI Director Kash Patel has sued The Atlantic over its reporting on his apparent unexplained absences and “bouts of excessive drinking.”
Early on in Trump’s second administration, the White House was in a spat with The Associated Press over its refusal to call the Gulf of Mexico Trump’s preferred name: the Gulf of America.
