Trump threatens to jail unspecified reporter over airmen rescue leaks
By Adam Cancryn, CNN
(CNN) — President Donald Trump threatened to jail a journalist as part of a hunt for the “leaker” behind initial reports Friday that a second Air Force officer from a downed US fighter jet was missing.
The public revelation complicated the administration’s military rescue efforts in Iran, Trump said at a White House press conference on Monday, which officials were trying to keep quiet following the successful recovery of the first airman on Friday.
“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, as he detailed the two separate rescues of the crew members shot down over Iran last week. “The person that did the story will go to jail if he doesn’t say.”
Trump did not specify which media outlet he was referring to, and the White House official declined to answer questions about his remarks. Iranian media had first reported the downed plane, sparking widespread discussion online about the fate of the crew before any major US outlet had published the news.
“An investigation is underway,” a White House official told CNN.
Several outlets, including CNN, reported last week on the missing airmen and the US military’s subsequent efforts to find and rescue them. The second Air Force officer was ultimately recovered early Sunday in a high-risk mission that CIA Director John Ratcliffe described Monday as “comparable to hunting for a single grain of sand in the middle of a desert.”
During the press conference, Trump said that the revelation of a second missing crew member had alerted the Iranian military and sparked their competing efforts to try to find him first.
“It became a much more difficult operation because a leaker leaked,” he said. “All of a sudden, the entire country of Iran knew that there was a pilot that was somewhere on their land that was fighting for his life.”
Trump’s threats marked the newest front in the administration’s long-running efforts to crack down on the media — including targeting journalists over reporting that it doesn’t like and seeking to restrict certain outlets’ ability to cover the White House and Pentagon.
In his first months back in office, Trump sought to wrest control of the makeup of the protective pool of journalists that covers him closely each day. He later attempted to bar The Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One over its refusal to adopt his preferred name for the Gulf of Mexico, sparking an extended legal battle.
The administration has since touted its efforts to cut public broadcasting funds to NPR and PBS stations, while frequently deriding negative coverage as “fake news.”
Trump, meanwhile, has personally sued at least six news organizations over his dissatisfaction with their reporting, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and CNN. Many of those lawsuits have dragged on for years, with Trump in some cases suffering a series of setbacks in court.
Still, he has been emboldened over the last year following decisions by CBS and ABC to settle respective cases that Trump brought against the outlets — resulting in payouts of tens of millions of dollars. Trump has since cast those outcomes as major victories and evidence of media bias against him, though both outlets denied any wrongdoing as part of the settlements.
Trump’s threats on Monday against journalists covering the war in Iran also came amid a long-running battle between the Pentagon and the press corps assigned to cover its activities.
After the Department of Defense instituted a new policy that required outlets to commit to only reporting information officially sanctioned by the government, dozens of reporters opted to give up their Pentagon credentials.
A judge last week sided with a legal challenge to the policy spearheaded by The New York Times, ordering the Pentagon to reinstate certain reporters’ credentials. Instead, the Defense Department said it would remove all the media offices from its headquarters, relegating all press outlets to an “annex” outside the building.
That new area, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said on X, “will be available when ready.”
The-CNN-Wire
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