https://archive.is/20260511222926/https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/trumps-complaints-about-iran-war-leaks-prompt-aggressive-doj-investigations-b5d31c13>President Trump privately complained to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche about media leaks in the wake of the Iran war last month, according to administration officials familiar with the matter, prompting an aggressive push at the Justice Department to pursue those investigations.>Blanche vowed to secure subpoenas specifically targeting the records of reporters who have worked on sensitive national security stories, one official said. In one meeting, Trump passed a stack of news articles he and other senior officials thought threatened national security to Blanche with a sticky note on it that said “treason,” another administration official said. Senior Justice Department officials have met with counterparts from the Pentagon to discuss the investigations, according to officials familiar with the meetings.>In particular, Trump has focused his ire on articles that provided details on how he arrived at his decision to launch the war, and what his advisers had told him as he deliberated, officials said. Launched 10 weeks ago, the conflict is now stuck in a shaky cease-fire. >“In all circumstances, the Department of Justice follows the facts and applies the law to identify those committing crimes against the United States,” a department spokeswoman said. >A White House official referred a request for comment to the Justice Department.>Trump’s recent push to pursue the leak investigations comes as the Justice Department had already stepped up investigations into sensitive reporting about the lead up to the Iran war. >The Wall Street Journal received grand jury subpoenas dated March 4 for records of Journal reporters.
> The request related to a Feb. 23 article that reported that Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and others at the Pentagon warned the president about the risks of an extended military campaign against Iran. Other news outlets, including Axios and the Washington Post, published similar stories that day. Trump launched the war five days later, on Feb. 28. >In a statement, Ashok Sinha, the chief communications officer of Dow Jones, which publishes the Journal, said: “The government’s subpoenas to The Wall Street Journal and our reporters represent an attack on constitutionally protected newsgathering. We will vigorously oppose this effort to stifle and intimidate essential reporting.”>Representatives of the Washington Post and Axios declined to comment.>Last month, officials said, Trump was specifically angry about an April 7 article in the New York Times that outlined how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pitched Trump on bombing Iran. That reporting provided vivid detail about senior-staff meetings on the topic, including ones in the secretive Situation Room. It described how U.S. intelligence officials skeptically viewed Netanyahu’s argument for a war that would end in regime change.>A spokeswoman for the Times declined to comment.>In recent months, prosecutors have sent subpoenas to media organizations as well as to email and phone providers seeking information in leak inquiries, according to people familiar with the requests. >For years, the Justice Department has limited federal prosecutors’ ability to obtain records of reporters’ contacts when investigating government leaks of sensitive information, to protect First Amendment press freedoms. In recent decades, prosecutors haven’t issued subpoenas to news outlets soon after publication, former prosecutors said.
>“Historically, the Justice Department has used subpoenas to news organizations in leak cases as a last resort and only after exhausting investigative efforts targeted at non-media sources,” said Bruce Brown, who is president of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. >Former Attorney General Pam Bondi last year made it easier for prosecutors to get subpoenas and search warrants targeting reporters in leak investigations by rescinding a Biden-era media policy that sharply restricted the use of such requests. Under the new policy, prosecutors are supposed to exhaust “all reasonable attempts” to obtain information from other sources before seeking reporters’ records. >Grand jury subpoenas “seek to invade directly into the reporter’s relationship with sources and the newsgathering process, which is meant to allow the American people to get information about the government,” said Theodore Boutrous, Jr., a prominent lawyer who often handles free speech and media cases and is representing the New York Times in a lawsuit against the Pentagon over press access. >In early April, Trump ousted Bondi, incensed that she hadn’t successfully prosecuted a number of his political enemies. Blanche, who grew close to Trump as his criminal defense attorney, took over as acting attorney general. Blanche has shown a willingness to quickly pursue the president’s priorities, saying Trump has a right and a duty to influence the Justice Department’s criminal probes and that Americans should be glad he is so involved in the agency’s historically independent affairs.>On April 3, a day after Bondi’s ouster, an American jet was shot down over Iran, prompting a massive rescue operation for two missing airmen. >Soon after, Trump publicly vowed to pursue the source of leaks about the downing of the jet, saying the government would take action against an unspecified news outlet that reported the information.
>The stack of news articles Trump provided the acting attorney general was about those rescue operations, an administration official said. The president and other officials thought the leaks could jeopardize the success of the rescue, the official said.>“We’re going to go to the media company that released it, and we’re going to say, ‘national security; give it up or go to jail,’” Trump said at a news conference. The rescue operations had been reported by many news outlets. >Asked about Trump’s threat during a news conference the following day, Blanche said the Justice Department would always investigate classified leaks that put “the lives of our soldiers at risk or the lives of agents at risk.”>“If that means sending a subpoena to the reporter, that’s exactly what we should do, and that’s exactly what we will be doing,” Blanche said. >The Justice Department has also stepped up its efforts to investigate other media leaks. In January it took the aggressive step of searching the home of a Washington Post reporter in an investigation into a systems engineer who worked for a government contractor and had been charged with unlawfully retaining classified information.>The move surprised some former prosecutors, given that the department already had enough evidence to charge the engineer, who has pleaded not guilty. In February, a federal judge rejected prosecutors’ request to search devices seized from the Post reporter’s home, ruling that the court would carry out the review.
It's over /news/ is finished
>>1514858Good. Newsfags are emboldening Iran.Essentially they're making promises Democrats will appease them after the midterms and causing them to dig in and wait.Thanks, liggerals.
>Newsfags are emboldening IranSuch as the faggot that is seething between this post and >>1514862You're encouraging dissent against Trump by posting here, shill. Want it to stop? Leave /news/.
>>1514858He wants to make telling the truth treason like in North Korea?
>>1514875Yes. He wants to decide what the truth is. Fascists do this.
>>1514874I can't wait until they replace you with an actual bot
I can't wait for the fascist bot between >>1514876 and this post to explode from seething too much.
>>1514875His social app is literally called “TRUTH”
>>1514863How is reporting bad?
>>1514863good. keep seething, yid.
>>1514891Because you are fake news
>>1514858Good, they've been slowly ruining society and all public discourse within it for decades with their fearmongering and slanted journalism. They don't even have the decency to keep a pro-white, pro-American slant, its usually exactly the opposite in a textbook example of biting the hand that feeds. Send the fuckers to prison and put some actual patriots in control of the media so we can finally delete the browns and get things moving in a positive direction again.
>>1514902>racist screedYou lost in 1945 and will lose again.
more articles about this:https://popularresistance.org/trump-administration-issues-subpoenas-to-stifle-reporting-on-war-against-iran/
>>1514908>1945It's the antisemites bashing the Iran war anon.
>>1514908>WAAAAAH ANYONE I DON'T LIKE IS A NAZIDon't care, didn't ask, fuck off.
American democracy isn't surviving three more years of MAGA, is it?
>>1514935You love to panic and catastrophize.I remember you telling me he wouldn't leave office if he lost the election. Joe Biden entered office and it was a regular transition January 20th, 2021
>>1514908kys loser
>>1514858based about time, fake news has been rampant for decades now and this orange cunt didn't do anything in his first term.
>>1514935Trump will be impeached and thrown into jail. His children will go into exile.
>>1514954I thought Trump was impeached a few times before. He's even a 'convicted felon'. I don't remember him serving any jail time though. Why do you think that will change now?
>>1514935No.
>The only people who should be represented here are Americans, nobody else. Inviting people who are not us into our democracy now necessitates dictatorship or fascism in order to delete the browns because we can't simply vote them out and we can't coexist>Trump and the H1Bs>Trump allowing Chinese students into US>The only people who should be represented here are Americans>Inviting people who are not us into our democracy now necessitates dictatorship or fascism in order to delete the browns>a brown shill here in /news/Hmmm
Send them to the cornfield, tRumpy.It's a good life, tRumpy.
>>1514936>Whitewashing his whole failed coup.If America took a page from Brazil in cracking down on the traitors who ran it, instead of thinking going after just the low lying fruit would be enough, things would be slightly better.
Send tRumpy and MAGAts to the cornfield, journalists
