Trump Defends DOJ Subpoenas of New York Times Reporters as Google Revealed to Be Targeted in Same Probe

President Donald Trump on Friday defended his Department of Justice's decision to subpoena reporters at The New York Times, hours after court filings revealed that Google also received a grand jury subpoena in the same criminal investigation into the leak of security details surrounding the president's new Air Force One aircraft.

The DOJ is investigating the disclosure of concerns about security measures on the Qatari-donated plane, which the Times reported on earlier in July.

Trump's comments came one day after the DOJ told a federal judge in New York that it was withdrawing the subpoenas, which had sought grand jury testimony from Times reporters along with their phone records. Judge Arun Subramanian had warned prosecutors on Thursday that he would quash the subpoenas if they were not voluntarily withdrawn.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Friday, Trump framed the investigation as targeting leakers rather than the press. "We're not after journalists," Trump said. "We're after leakers. We're after people that are cowards, people that are unpatriotic, people that are treasonous in many cases."

"And the way you find them is through journalists," he added. "That person should be found, and the way you find them is to tell the journalist, if it's something having to do with national security, you tell the journalist: 'Who is it?'"

Trump also acknowledged the investigation was far from resolved. "And we have a long way to go with that case," he said.

While Trump spoke, a letter from Google's lawyers to Judge Subramanian was unsealed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. The letter disclosed that Google received a subpoena on July 16 from a grand jury, at the DOJ's request, seeking "subscriber information associated with a phone number."

The subpoena to Google was issued the day after Times lawyers moved to quash the subpoenas directed at their reporters.

Alongside the subpoena, Google also received on July 16 a non-disclosure order — signed by a magistrate judge — barring the company from informing the phone number's subscriber that their information had been sought. Google's lawyers asked Subramanian to vacate that order, arguing it violated the First Amendment.

In their letter, Google's lawyers pointed to a government admission that prosecutors had "inadvertently included language that the investigation was 'not public' when the fact of the investigation was public." Subramanian granted Google's request to vacate the non-disclosure order, court filings show.

The episode draws fresh scrutiny to the administration's use of the grand jury process to pursue leak investigations that touch journalists and major technology platforms simultaneously — raising questions about the scope of the probe and its potential implications for press freedom and platform disclosure obligations.

With the subpoenas to Times reporters now withdrawn and the non-disclosure order against Google vacated, the contours of the investigation remain largely sealed from public view, even as both the White House and the courts continue to weigh in publicly on its boundaries.