President Donald Trump on Friday defended the Justice Department’s use of subpoenas against New York Times reporters, even as new court filings revealed that Google was also targeted in the same criminal investigation into leaked information about the president’s new Air Force One plane.
The president’s comments came one day after the DOJ told a New York federal judge it would withdraw subpoenas seeking grand jury testimony from Times reporters and their phone records. The investigation centers on the leak of security concerns regarding Trump’s Qatari-donated aircraft, which the Times reported on earlier in July.
Judge Arun Subramanian had warned prosecutors Thursday that he would quash the subpoenas if they were not voluntarily withdrawn.
Trump Says Journalists Key to Finding Leakers
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Friday, Trump insisted his administration was not targeting journalists directly. “We’re not after journalists,” he said. “We’re after leakers. We’re after people that are cowards, people that are unpatriotic, people that are treasonous in many cases.”
However, the president acknowledged that journalists were central to the investigation’s strategy. “The way you find them is through journalists,” Trump said, adding that when national security is involved, authorities should ask reporters to reveal their sources.
“We have a long way to go with that case,” the president added.
Google Subpoena Unsealed
Around the time Trump was speaking, a letter from Google’s lawyers to Judge Subramanian was unsealed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. The filing revealed that Google received a grand jury subpoena on July 16 at the DOJ’s request, seeking subscriber information associated with a phone number.
The subpoena came one day after Times lawyers moved to quash the subpoenas issued to their reporters. Google also received a non-disclosure order on July 16 preventing the company from informing the phone number’s subscriber about the subpoena.
First Amendment Challenge
In Friday’s letter, Google’s attorneys asked Subramanian to vacate the non-disclosure order, which had been signed by a magistrate judge. They argued the order violated the First Amendment’s free speech protections.
The lawyers noted that the government had acknowledged an error in its application, admitting it “inadvertently included language that the investigation was ‘not public’ when the fact of the investigation was public.”
Court filings show Subramanian granted Google’s request to vacate the non-disclosure order.
Source: www.cnbc.com — https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/24/trump-doj-subpoenas-new-york-times-google.html
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