Senators press top Justice Department officials on decision to subpoena New York Times reporters

In two separate Capitol Hill hearings on Wednesday, senators pressed top Justice Department officials on a decision to subpoena New York Times journalists over a story about security flaws in President Donald Trump's new Air Force One plane.

Senators on the Intelligence Committee questioned Jay Clayton — the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan and President Donald Trump's nominee for director of national intelligence — about what Sen. Ron Wyden termed a "flagrant attack" on journalists. Todd Blanche, Trump's pick for attorney general, was asked by a Democratic senator on the Judiciary Committee about "targeting reporters."

The grand jury subpoenas were signed by Clayton, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, as part of what he told senators was "an ongoing national security investigation."

The five New York Times reporters who were subpoenaed Friday — Julian Barnes, Eric Lipton, Tyler Pager, Eric Schmitt, and Adam Goldman — published an investigation the previous day about the security concerns with the new Air Force One, which was donated by Qatar. The modified Boeing 747-8 plane lacks the same sophisticated antimissile defense capabilities of the old aircraft, the Times reported.

At Clayton's confirmation hearing before the Intelligence Committee, Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, asked why he took the unusual step of signing off on subpoenas to journalists.

"I'm happy to talk to you and this committee about our approach with the First Amendment, and our efforts in all cases to limit to the greatest extent possible any intrusion into the operation of the free press," Clayton said.

Clayton told Wyden that he followed "the process that we were required to follow."

"I operate by asking my team, 'What do you think?'" Clayton said. "Any action in this regard, you can be assured, was a consultative exercise with the prosecutors in my office."

The subpoenas required the reporters to testify before a grand jury in Manhattan and initially demanded their appearance on Wednesday, the Times previously reported.

The Times is expected to ask US District Judge Ronnie Abrams — the federal judge who is overseeing grand jury issues and leads the courthouse's media access committee — to quash the subpoenas.

The White House directed FBI Director Kash Patel to oversee the leak investigation into the Times' reporting about Air Force One, according to the Times. During Blanche's confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which took place at the same time as Clayton's, Sen. Peter Welch asked him if he supported Patel's effort to subpoena the Times journalists.

Blanche told Welch, a Vermont Democrat, that the Justice Department saw the journalists as "material witnesses, just like reporters would be witnesses to a car crash."

"The question we want to ask them is who provided them with classified national security information, which everybody in this body should want to protect — I would hope," Blanche said.

A spokesperson for The New York Times declined to comment on Blanche's and Clayton's comments to the Senate committees.

In an email to the newsroom Saturday, Times Executive Editor Joe Kahn called the subpoenas a "retaliatory abuse of prosecutorial power."

"This is a naked attempt to intimidate individual reporters and to prevent The Times and other independent news media from doing important reporting protected by the First Amendment," he said. "We will mount a full defense of our staff, of course. We will also fight to ensure that this blatant effort to suppress coverage of a matter clearly in the public interest in no way impedes accountability reporting of this or any other administration."

During the Trump administration, the Justice Department has taken a more aggressive stance toward journalists. Last year, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi made it easier for prosecutors to obtain search warrants and subpoenas for members of the media by scrapping Biden-era policies that required department officials to weigh alternative ways to obtain the information they sought.