Rachel Maddow spent part of Monday night breaking down the Trump administration’s recent subpoena of four New York Times journalists, calling the move an “obvious intimidation effort.”
On Saturday, the Justice Department delivered subpoenas to the homes of New York Times journalists Julian E. Barnes, Eric Lipton, Tyler Pager and Eric Schmitt after they reported on safety concerns regarding the Qatari-donated plane that President Trump intends to use as his new Air Force One. The documents order the journalists to testify in front of a federal grand jury on Wednesday, in addition to giving up their sources.
“I do not in any way want to diminish the importance of or the quality of the New York Times’ coverage that sent the White House into this Freak-Out, Subpoena, Mandatory Testimony, Give-Up-Your-Sources-or-Go-to-Jail Mode,” Maddow said. “But this whole thing appears to be about something the Times reported that doesn’t exactly appear to be the world’s most tightly held state secret.”
The “Rachel Maddow Show” host went on to show a publicly available YouTube video detailing some of the defensive capabilities that the old Air Force One jet had that the Qatari-donated plane reportedly does not.
“That is great reporting from the New York Times. But it is also not exactly, you know, cracking the Enigma Code. It’s like, ‘One of these things is not like the other,’” she noted. “The way they served the subpoenas struck me as sort of an obvious intimidation effort.”
Maddow was joined Monday night by First Amendment attorney — and her own personal lawyer — Ted Boutrous Jr., who similarly condemned the Justice Department’s legal tactic from this past weekend.
“These subpoenas are way out of bounds. They depart from basically every norm, every practice. The Justice Department has had guidelines in place since the Nixon administration … to protect journalists and to make sure the Justice Department didn’t do what they just did,” Boutrous said. “The Justice Department doesn’t usually send the FBI to reporters’ homes.”
“There was no need to do it. Gratuitous, vindictive, intimidation; retaliatory for reporting on important public issues,” he added. “What they’re trying to do is dry up information to the American people so the American people can’t figure out what’s happening.”
“It’s really just a transparent effort to intimidate and harass,” Boutrous concluded.
