On March 4, the Department of Justice (DOJ) subpoenaed three Wall Street Journal journalists, seeking information on their sources used to report on Pentagon concerns over an extended military operation in Iran. The article that alerted the DOJ was published five days before Trump started the Iran War. On the spring of this year, date unknown, Washington Post journalist Ellen Nakashima was also subpoenaed about a “national security matter.” The subpoenas demanded journalists from both newspapers to appear before a federal grand jury. Ultimately, the DOJ would rescind both aggressive subpoenas, also on an unknown date in early June.
This is the first known instance of the second Trump administration issuing grand jury subpoenas to members of the press. It is unknown as to why the DOJ withdrew its subpoena requests. However, it is known that the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal opted to quash the subpoenas, and the judge presiding over the Eastern District of Virginia had a secretive meeting on the issue.
Trump was personally enraged by the reporting conducted by the journalists from the two papers. He pressured acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to issue them, and seemingly accused the journalists of committing treason when he wrote that word, in characteristic Sharpie, on a stack of newspaper articles. There is no evidence that these journalists committed treason or other illegal activity. Before the second Trump administration, the federal government typically pursued leakers in its own ranks, rather than the journalists that received their information.
