Trump administration sought phone records of New York Times journalists and their relatives

The New York Times building in New York, New York. Photograph: Kylie Cooper/Reuters View image in fullscreen The New York Times building in New York, New York. Photograph: Kylie Cooper/Reuters Trump administration sought phone records of New York Times journalists and their relatives Officials sought identity of sources ‘long before’ reporters wrote about the president’s Air Force One jet from Qatar Donald Trump’s administration sought phone records of several New York Times journalists and even those of some of their relatives, according to a motion unsealed Monday – an unusually aggressive attempt to unmask the confidential sources of reporters who wrote about the president’s Air Force One jet from Qatar. The Trump administration’s push to compel the identity of sources in the form of additional subpoenas comes at a time when the executive branch’s relationship with the press is increasingly contentious. The efforts, described in a letter-motion filed by the Times over the weekend, were more expansive than previously known, the newspaper noted – and also covered a time frame that exceeded the news articles in question. “Two of the subpoenas seek records beginning on [1 January] 2026, long before the events that are purportedly the basis for the [justice] department’s investigation,” lawyers for the Times wrote in the letter. “That timeframe strongly suggests that the department is using this investigation not to focus on any purported concerns arising from the [8 and 9 July] articles, but instead to forage for information about the journalists’ source relationships more broadly.” The phone records subpoenas are on top of grand jury subpoenas served on 10 July on three journalists that sought to compel testimony from the reporters about the identify of their sources. The Times has separately challenged those grand jury subpoenas, and US district Judge Arun Subramanian is scheduled to hear arguments on Thursday. The judge has also frozen enforcement of the phone records subpoenas pending a ruling on the newspaper’s motion to quash those. Lawyers for the newspaper noted that some of the phone records subpoenas were issued on the same day as the grand jury ones, an additional one was issued on 14 July, and another was issued on 16 July – after the Times had already moved to quash the grand jury subpoenas. In arguing for the phone records subpoenas to be spiked, the Times said the government had acted in “bad faith” and had ignored its own protocols by not giving the journalists advance notice that records were being sought and by demanding the information “without first conducting any serious investigation”. The newspaper’s lawyers said the additional subpoenas call “into question the accuracy” of testimony given recently by Jay Clayton, the US attorney in Manhattan, where the grand jury subpoenas were issued. On Wednesday at his confirmation hearing to be the Trump administration’s director of national intelligence, Clayton said that “we followed