OAN Staff Katherine Mosack
8:39 AM – Saturday, July 11, 2026
The Trump administration has reportedly issued subpoenas for several The New York Times (NYT) journalists after the outlet published a report on President Donald Trump’s use of his new Air Force One plane, the paper said.
On Saturday, the outlet reported that its employees received subpoenas on Friday, calling on them to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan next Wednesday.
The NYT called the action “an extraordinary escalation in President Trump’s efforts to threaten and intimidate independent news organizations.”
“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,” said David McCraw, the company’s “top” lawyer.
“Our journalists report the facts and advance the American public’s right to know how their government is operating and their taxpayer dollars are being used,” he went on. “This brazen act 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.”
Several journalists, including Julian E. Barnes, Eric Lipton, Tyler Pager and Eric Schmitt, who were subpoenaed, wrote on Wednesday that President Trump used his older Air Force One Plane for his departure from the NATO summit in Turkey as a security measure amid reports of an alleged Iranian plot against his life and renewed hostilities between the U.S. and Iran.
Citing anonymous sources, the reporting said that the new Air Force One, donated by Qatar, lacked certain advanced security features, such as antimissile capabilities. Therefore, urged by the Secret Service, according to the paper, the president began his trip home on the old plane and later boarded the new plane at a stop at Mildenhall, a Royal Air Force base in Suffolk, England, en route to Joint Base Andrews.
Trump denied that the change was made dude to security concerns and argued that the new jet needed to leave early to make stops at U.S. military bases.
“We have it going to Europe to a couple of bases so the soldiers can see it because it’s truly magnificent,” he told reporters during a NATO conference.
The outlet decried the subpoenas, saying they “contain few specifics” and only ask for testimonies “in regard to an alleged violation of federal criminal law.”
“Mr. Trump has long been a harsh critic of the news media. But in his second term in office, he has moved aggressively to use the immense powers of the federal government in his efforts to attack the press,” the outlet further lamented.
In a statement on Saturday, Department of Justice (DOJ) spokeswoman Emily Covington clarified that “reporters are not the targets, those leaking classified information are.”
“We value and appreciate the important role that the press plays in this country, but [the] DOJ also plays an important role to make sure that the people entrusted with our nation’s secrets do what they’re supposed to do with that information,” said Covington. She added, “We recognize there may always be natural tension there, but we are not going to ignore the law.”
Prior to the Wednesday article’s publication, an official from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) contacted a reporter and an editor at the NYT requesting the article be held as it may have constituted a national security issue, according to the news outlet, which said the official “declined to explain the security issue.
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