Trump taking NY Times reporters to court for unfavorable reporting

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Donald Trump DOJ freedom of the press NY Times

Trump taking NY Times reporters to court for unfavorable reporting

Late last week, Donald Trump sent federal agents to the homes of four NY Times journalists and handed them subpoenas issued by the Department of Justice (DOJ) demanding they reveal their confidential sources on a story covering the new Air Force One — a “gift” from Qatar — and cease their unfavorable reporting concerning the lack of security features existing in the old one.

Apparently, Qatar’s influence-buying gift from Jared Kushner’s Middle East buddies wasn’t the “greatest ever built” after all — even after taxpayers chipped in $400 million in upgrades for the “free” aircraft — so Trump sicced his DOJ on the journalists to intimidate them and their sources into silence (via AP News):

The Department of Justice has subpoenaed New York Times journalists after they reported on security concerns involving the new, Qatari-gifted Air Force One, marking a dramatic escalation of President Donald Trump ’s campaign against the media that has drawn condemnation for eroding a fundamental freedom of American democracy.

The new jet, a present from the U.S. ally that the administration spent $400 million on to retrofit and upgrade, entered service last week. But Trump used an older model Air Force One jet to leave a NATO summit in Turkey and later referenced threats against him made by Iran.

The subpoenas seek to force the reporters to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan next week, the Times said, adding that federal agents delivered some subpoenas to the reporters at their homes.

They were issued after FBI Director Kash Patel and other Justice Department officials met at the White House on Friday to talk about the matter, according to a person familiar with the discussions who was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Before [the NY Times’] first story was published, a senior official at the FBI contacted a reporter and editor to ask that the article be held, citing national security issues. The newspaper said that the FBI official declined to explain the security issue but asked The Times to disclose its sources for the story, which the Times said it refused to do. (Emphasis mine)

Subpoenas compelling journalists to testify against their own sources have been rare in American history for a reason. Still, it hasn’t stopped Donald Trump from going after the press time after time. For example:

Trump began laying the foundation for jailing reporters critical of his administration just days after the 2024 election when he ordered his Republican Party buddies in the Senate to “KILL” a bill designed to protect the fourth estate. The bill, known as the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying (PRESS) Act, would have protected reporters and journalists from government bullying and had already unanimously passed the GOP-controlled House.

During his 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly promised to exact retribution on his political rivals and critics — including members of the press — using the guidelines provided by Project 2025 and the accompanying Agenda 47. Using Project 2025 as his instruction manual — he once claimed he knew nothing about the document — Trump has been reining in the free press, beginning with a renewed emphasis on expanding libel laws to make it easier to sue media outlets for spreading “fake news.”

But hey, why sue the media out of business when you can just throw reporters in jail? (via AlterNet.org):

In a Monday morning, April 28 post on his Truth Social platform, President Donald Trump — angry over his low approval ratings in recent polls — called for the New York Times, ABC News, the Washington Post and others to be “investigated for election fraud.”

The post came three days after ABC News’ Katherine Faulders reported that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), under U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, had “rescinded a policy implemented during the Biden Administration that restricted prosecutors from seizing reporters’ records in criminal investigations, according to an internal memo obtained by ABC News.”

In an article published by Salon on April 29, Austin Sarat — a professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College in Massachusetts — warns that the Trump Administration and the Trump-era DOJ are quite serious about using the legal system against reporters.

“(The Trump Administration’s) latest effort to bring the press to heel came on April 25, when news leaked of the Justice Department’s intention to aggressively pursue journalists who receive leaked information from confidential government sources,” Sarat explains. “When it is implemented, the policy will give the administration another tool to make the lives of reporters miserable and provide the basis for jailing those who resist.”

Sarat continues, “While no journalists are presently in jail in this country for doing their jobs, prosecuting and punishing them is a regular part of the arsenal of repressive regimes around the world. And the atmosphere for the American press is by no means friendly. April alone saw a dramatic escalation of threats.”(Emphasis mine)

Donald Trump has always displayed a clear hatred of the Constitution because of the limits it places on his tyrannical ambitions. Nowhere is this more evident than in his self-declared war against the news media — or as he repeatedly calls it, the “enemy of the American people” — where he promised to “open our libel laws” so that when the press writes “purposely negative and horrible and false articles” about him, he can “sue them and win lots of money.”

“We’re going to open up those libel laws. So that when the New York Times writes a hit piece, which is a total disgrace, or when the Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they’re totally protected.” (Emphasis mine)

I know there are many ready to accuse me of distorting the facts concerning Trump’s weaponization of the DOJ against NY Times journalists, but none other than Attorney General Pam Bondi made his intentions perfectly clear in the memo mentioned above that revoked First Amendment protections for reporters (via Salon.com):

Bondi’s new memo chastises the news media for publishing leaked material “that undermine(s) President Trump’s policies, victimize(s) government agencies, and cause(s) harm to the American people”.

Calling such activity Illegal and immoral, the Attorney General said she would be personally responsible for approving “efforts to question or arrest members of the news media.”

There you have it. Journalists are put on notice that if they publish leaked material that “undermine(s) President Trump’s policies,” they may be arrested. (Emphasis mine)

As I lay out in my book, The New Axis of Evil: Exposing the Bipartisan War on Liberty, threats to our God-given constitutionally protected rights like what we are seeing from Donald Trump taking NY Times journalists to court for unfavorable reporting have been going on for decades. Case in point: Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black who wrote these words over 50 years ago in a case involving a leak of the Vietnam-era Pentagon Papers to the New York Times and Washington post:

“In the First Amendment, the founding fathers gave the Free Press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy… the government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press could remain forever free to censure the government.”

“The press was protected so that it could bear the secrets of the government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.” (Emphasis mine)

And here’s a little tidbit for you to digest, it was Richard Nixon — a man Trump is often compared to — that brought the Vietnam Pentagon Papers case to the Supreme Court. Ironic, isn’t it?

 

David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.

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