Government withdraws subpoenas of 3 reporters for The New York Times
after admitting legal errors
[July 24, 2026]
By MICHAEL R. SISAK, ERIC TUCKER and LARRY NEUMEISTER
NEW YORK (AP) — Criticized by a federal judge for sloppy legal work, the
government on Thursday grudgingly withdrew subpoenas that would have
compelled three New York Times reporters to testify about their sources
for articles about President Donald Trump’s Qatari-gifted Air Force One
jet.
The withdrawals in U.S. District Court followed a remarkable
back-and-forth between a visibly irritated Judge Arun Subramanian and
government lawyers. They come at a time when the Trump administration is
vigorously going after news organizations whose reporting and coverage
it doesn’t like — and also trying to crack down on leaks inside the
government.
The government’s turnabout in the face of vigorous legal opposition and
a stern reprimand from a judge marked the latest instance of the Justice
Department making aggressive moves to compel journalists to identify
their sources before a grand jury — only to later retreat. The
administration recently withdrew similar subpoenas that sought to compel
testimony from journalists for The Washington Post and The Wall Street
Journal related to separate national security coverage.
Subramanian said he otherwise would have granted the newspaper’s request
to reject the subpoenas because regulations pertaining to subpoenas
served on journalists maintain that they should be issued as a last
resort in an investigation.
“Subpoenas are the last step, not the first step, but the last step,”
the judge said, citing rules set to protect against violations of the
First Amendment. He said the government’s actions had turned the law and
the regulations “on its head.”
“When you see something like this, if this were a civil proceeding, what
I would normally do is ask the parties to show causes why sanctions
should not be issued,” the judge said, referencing punishment for
lawyers for egregious actions.
After the hearing, the Justice Department lashed out at Subramanian in a
statement, saying he “threatened our attorneys with sanctions unless
subpoenas were withdrawn, and blocked us from presenting the meticulous
process of this investigation.”
“The grand jury has a right to hear testimony from all material
witnesses in a federal criminal investigation. This judge’s conduct
overrides clear longstanding principles and common sense — blocking the
grand jury from receiving core evidence in a national security
investigation,” the statement said.
“Make no mistake,” it added, “this investigation remains ongoing, and we
will pursue justice against those threatening national security by
leaking classified information, a serious federal crime.”
Government attorneys upbraided by judge
Subramanian noted that with protections for journalists at stake, the
government was required to ensure it could not obtain what it needed
from any other sources before issuing subpoenas to journalists.
A Justice Department lawyer, Sean Buckley, cast the government’s
missteps as inadvertent errors and said: “No one was trying to pull a
fast one.” Buckley apologized for other subpoenas that sought records
for phone numbers belonging to one reporter’s mother and two of the
journalists’ spouses.
“That was an error, judge, which we own,” Buckley said. “It was a
consequence of trying to move quickly.”
“These things are starting to pile up,” Subramanian said, becoming
increasingly testy.
The hearing was held publicly despite efforts by the Trump
administration to keep secret the litigation spawned by subpoenas it
served on the Times’ journalists to try to get them to divulge their
sources.
The newspaper’s lawyers had challenged the validity of the grand jury
subpoenas, along with subpoenas issued for phone records of several
Times journalists and some of their relatives. Senior Times officials,
including the paper’s managing editor and general counsel, sat in the
gallery watching during Thursday's proceedings.
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The request for phone records raised questions about the extent of the
investigation being carried out by the Justice Department.
David McCraw, the Times’ chief newsroom lawyer, said after the hearing
in a statement that it “was an important affirmation of our country’s
commitment to a free press.”
“We are pleased that the government finally conceded that the subpoenas
violated the law, but they should never have been issued in the first
place,” he said. “We will not be deterred in the face of tactics like
these.”
Court action comes after reporting on new Air Force One jet
The new jet in question, a present from Qatar that Trump’s
administration spent $400 million to retrofit and upgrade, recently
entered service. But Trump used an older model Air Force One jet to
leave a NATO summit in Turkey earlier this month.
The Times, citing anonymous sources, reported that the switch had come
at the urging of the Secret Service and that the newer plane lacked some
of the advanced security features of the older Air Force One aircraft,
including antimissile capabilities. On social media, Trump rejected
claims of security concerns.
The Times wrote in a letter to the judge several days ago that two
subpoenas seek records beginning on Jan. 1, long before the newspaper
published articles on July 8 and July 9 that became the basis for the
grand jury subpoenas.
It said that lengthy stretch of records sought would indicate that the
purpose of the subpoenas might have been “to forage for information
about the Journalists’ source relationships more broadly.”
The Times argued for the phone records subpoenas to be disallowed on the
grounds that the government had acted in “bad faith” and ignored its own
protocols by not giving the journalists advance notice that records were
being sought and by demanding the information “without first conducting
any serious investigation.”
The Justice Department has justified the grand jury subpoenas by saying
that “reporters are not the targets, those leaking classified
information are.” The department also said it had complied with its own
regulations in issuing the subpoenas and had taken “certain”
investigative steps before seeking them. It said it was authorized to
delay disclosure of the phone records subpoenas but decided to alert the
journalists’ lawyers “so that counsel could advance any
arguments—regardless of merit—in furtherance of their motion.”
In fighting the subpoenas, the Times' lawyers highlighted how the
government's carelessness could have exposed sensitive information that
had nothing to do with the journalists. The mother whose phone records
were mistakenly sought is a mental health professional with confidential
client relationships and one of the two spouses is the general counsel
of a law firm, the lawyers said.
At Thursday’s hearing, a final rebuke from the judge to the government
came when he asked its lawyers to assure him that it won’t repeat a
scenario that left one journalist being served a subpoena by an FBI
agent while he was home watching the family-friendly movie “The Sheep
Detectives,” about sheep on a quest to solve the murder of their
shepherd.
Said the judge, to loud courtroom laughter: “I can’t think of anything
more inconsistent with ‘Sheep Detective’ than an FBI agent showing up at
your door.”
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Associated Press Writer Eric Tucker reported from Washington
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