Federal prosecutors in President Donald Trump’s Justice Department have withdrawn a controversial set of subpoenas against New York Times reporters.
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According to the Associated Press, the subpoena withdrawals “followed a remarkable back and forth between a visibly irritated Judge Arun Subramanian and government attorneys. 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 subpoenas applied to three New York Times reporters who broke news about security problems with the Qatari jet intended to be the president’s new Air Force One.
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The leak of that information prompted a massive scramble at the DOJ to find who was responsible for spilling it, which focused on trying to extract it from the reporters themselves, a move that some have argued likely violated the DOJ’s own press freedom guidelines.
In the exchange in court, Subramanian “said he otherwise would have granted the newspaper’s request to reject the subpoenas because laws and regulations pertaining to subpoenas served on journalists maintain that they should be issued as a last resort in an investigation,” forcing DOJ’s hand to withdraw them.
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