A sweeping escalation of tensions between the former president and the American press has emerged, with multiple leading U.S. news organizations confirming they have been subpoenaed by the Department of Justice at the explicit urging of former President Donald Trump, who has waged a relentless campaign against critical coverage of his Iran conflict.
The Wall Street Journal, one of the nation’s most prominent business and general-interest news publications, broke the story Monday, confirming it received a grand jury subpoena dated March 4 seeking internal reporter records. The demand comes as Trump pressures Attorney General Todd Blanche—his former personal attorney, who now leads the DOJ—to launch investigations into leaks of sensitive information related to the ongoing Iran war.
Citing an anonymous senior administration official, the Journal reported that Blanche personally pledged to secure subpoenas specifically targeting the work records of reporters who have reported on sensitive national security topics tied to the conflict. In one high-level meeting, the outlet added, Trump handed Blanche a thick stack of news articles that the president and other top officials claimed undermined U.S. national security. Scrawled on a sticky note attached to the stack was a single word: “treason.”
Trump’s aggression toward press coverage of the Iran war is not a new development. The president and his top cabinet members, including Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth, have repeatedly publicly condemned media coverage of the conflict and threatened journalists who publish classified information—a routine practice for national security reporting that is protected under longstanding press freedom precedents.
As early as March of this year, Trump raised the prospect of bringing treason charges against journalists he accused of spreading what he called “false information” about the Iran war. The following month, he doubled down, stating explicitly that he would push to imprison reporters who covered the downing of a U.S. fighter jet by Iranian forces and the subsequent rescue operation for the plane’s crew.
The subpoena issued to the Wall Street Journal specifically ties back to a February 23 report that revealed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine and other senior Pentagon leaders had privately warned Trump about the severe risks of a prolonged military campaign against Iran. Multiple other major outlets, including Axios and The Washington Post, published matching reports on the same day. Five days after that reporting, on February 28, Trump officially launched the full-scale military offensive against Iran.
In an official statement Monday, Ashok Sinha, chief communications officer for Dow Jones, the Wall Street Journal’s parent company, denounced the action as a direct attack on constitutionally protected journalistic work. “The government’s subpoenas to The Wall Street Journal and our reporters represent an attack on constitutionally protected newsgathering,” Sinha said. “We will vigorously oppose this effort to stifle and intimidate essential reporting.”
CNN corroborated the Journal’s reporting Monday, adding that multiple other news outlets beyond the Journal have also received similar subpoenas over the past several months. However, the network noted that many of these targeted organizations have opted not to comment publicly on the orders to date, a choice that has drawn sharp criticism from press freedom advocates and independent journalists.
Scott Stedman, an investigative journalist with independent outlet The Newsground, slammed the leadership of silent targeted organizations for what he called cowardice in the face of an open assault on press liberty. “The president uses the DOJ to target your news organization with subpoenas because he wants to out your sources and you don’t even have the guts to say anything,” Stedman wrote.