President Donald Trump threatened to force a news organization to turn over the name of an anonymous source who revealed details about a U.S. airman who went missing in Iran. Several outlets reported on the lost airman, who was subsequently rescued after his fighter jet was shot down.
“We’re looking very hard to find that leaker,” Trump said in a press briefing Monday. “They didn’t know there was somebody missing until this leaker gave the information. So whoever it was, we think we’ll be able to find it out because 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, who frequently spars with media companies and individual reporters by name, did not say which outlet he was referring to. Representatives for the White House and Justice Department did not respond immediately to clarifying questions about Trump’s remarks.
Trump claimed that Iran learned that the pilot was missing in its territory only from media reports, and this attention complicated the search-and-rescue mission. “All of a sudden, they know that there’s somebody out there,” Trump said. “They see all these planes coming in. It became a much more difficult operation because a leaker leaked that we have one, we’ve rescued one, but there’s another one out there that we’re trying to get.”
He called the source a “sick person,” though he said they “probably didn’t realize the extent of how bad it was.” Still, he said “the person that did the story will go to jail if he doesn’t say, and that doesn’t last long.”
The Justice Department in 2025 rescinded a Biden-era policy that safeguarded journalists from subpoenas during leak investigations.
The Washington Post has faced off with federal prosecutors in recent months after a Post reporter’s home was searched and her devices seized in January as part of an investigation of a government contractor accused of illegally retaining classified government materials. A federal magistrate judge in March blocked the government from searching the reporter’s electronic devices.
Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said in a statement that news organizations have a First Amendment right to publish stories on matters of public importance, including those the government would rather suppress.
“President Trump’s threat to force journalists to disclose their sources raises serious press freedom concerns because journalists’ ability to do their work turns in part on their ability to protect their sources’ identities,” Jaffer said. “President Trump’s threat should be understood as an effort to intimidate the press and to prevent journalists from doing work the public needs them to do.”
Clayton Weimers, executive director of Reporters Without Borders North America, said that this isn’t the first threat of its kind from Trump, and likely won’t be the last.
“This is not just Trumpian bluster,” he said. “We should take him both seriously and literally. This is the same Trump administration that misled a judge in order to seize the work and personal devices of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson. It’s the same administration that arrested and charged Don Lemon and Georgia Fort for reporting in Minnesota. This administration thinks journalism is a crime.”
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