Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer accused President Donald Trump of weaponizing federal law enforcement against the press on Saturday, calling him “one of the weakest, most thin-skinned individuals the world has ever seen” after the Justice Department issued subpoenas to multiple New York Times journalists over their reporting on security concerns involving Trump’s new Qatari-gifted Air Force One.
Schumer’s statement, posted to X at 12:52 PM on July 11, 2026, read in full: “Donald Trump is one of the weakest, most thin-skinned individuals the world has ever seen. Reporters have the right and duty to report the truth. It’s not their fault his foreign-gifted plane is a national security threat. This subpoena is a gross overreach and a disgusting misuse of federal law enforcement resources that should alarm every American.”
The New York senator’s post linked directly to a New York Times report detailing how federal agents delivered subpoenas to Times journalists Friday evening, in some cases showing up at the reporters’ homes. The subpoenas compel the journalists to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan this coming Wednesday.
The subpoenaed reporters — Julian E. Barnes, Eric Lipton, Tyler Pager and Eric Schmitt — were the bylines on a Wednesday story reporting that the Secret Service had urged Trump to leave the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkiye, on the older Air Force One rather than the new Boeing 747-8 donated by Qatar, citing unspecified security concerns. A follow-up Times story the next day reported that the new aircraft lacked several of the advanced security features present on the older jet, including antimissile capabilities. Both stories relied on anonymous sourcing.
The subpoenas were issued by Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, who was nominated by Trump last month to become the next director of national intelligence. Clayton is scheduled to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday — the same day the Times reporters have been ordered to testify before the grand jury.
The Justice Department pushed back on characterizations that journalists were being targeted. In a Saturday statement, DOJ spokeswoman Emily Covington said reporters “are not the targets, those leaking classified information are,” adding that the department “value[s] and appreciate[s] the important role that the press plays in this country” while insisting it would not “ignore the law” when it comes to protecting classified material.
The Times rejected that framing. David McCraw, the paper’s top newsroom lawyer, said in a Friday evening statement that the sight of federal agents on reporters’ doorsteps “should shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution and the press freedom it protects,” and described the subpoenas as an attempt to intimidate journalists out of doing their jobs.
Schumer was not alone among Senate Democrats in condemning the move. Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware called the subpoenas “another slap in the face of the First Amendment” and an attempt to silence journalists the administration doesn’t like. Press freedom organizations echoed the criticism: Bruce D. Brown, president of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said the subpoenas broke from longstanding Justice Department practice requiring prosecutors to seek information from reporters only as a last resort, and called for Clayton to be held accountable when he appears before the Senate Intelligence Committee. The White House Correspondents’ Association and the National Press Club also issued statements defending the Times journalists.
This is not the first time the Trump administration’s Justice Department has sought to compel testimony from journalists in 2026. Earlier this year, subpoenas were issued to reporters at The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post as part of separate leak investigations; both were withdrawn after the news organizations fought back in sealed court filings. In January, FBI agents searched the home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson and seized her phones, laptop and smartwatch as part of an investigation tied to her reporting on the administration’s efforts to shrink the federal workforce.
The New York Times is currently engaged in several separate legal disputes with the Trump administration and the president personally. Trump sued the paper last year alleging defamation and reputational harm tied to its 2024 election coverage. The Times, in turn, sued the Defense Department in December over new restrictions on reporters covering the military and again after the Pentagon further reduced press access to the building. In May, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued the Times over alleged employment discrimination; the paper filed a counterclaim on Friday arguing the suit was retaliation for its coverage of the Trump presidency.
Schumer’s Broader Record on the Administration, the Pentagon and Press Freedom
Saturday’s post is consistent with a pattern of pointed statements Schumer has made this year targeting the Trump administration’s conduct on defense and national security matters. In December, Schumer took to the Senate floor to demand accountability from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over a reported order to strike all occupants of a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean. Schumer told colleagues he did not think the country had “ever seen someone so unserious, so childish, so obviously insecure serving as Secretary of Defense as Pete Hegseth,” and called on Hegseth to release military tapes of the strike and testify under oath before Congress.
The subpoenas also arrive against the backdrop of a broader, monthslong effort by Hegseth’s Pentagon to curtail press access to the building. Nearly every major news outlet, including wire services, television networks and print publications, refused to sign a Pentagon policy last fall requiring reporters to pledge not to gather or publish unauthorized information, even if unclassified, in order to retain their press credentials. The Pentagon Press Association called the policy an “unprecedented message of intimidation.” Trump publicly backed Hegseth’s approach, telling reporters that the restrictions stemmed from national security concerns and that the press corps could be moved out of the Pentagon entirely. Earlier this year, the Pentagon went further, designating its press office a classified space and barring journalists from entering it altogether — a move a federal judge later struck down after the Times sued, though the Defense Department has since appealed.
Schumer has repeatedly framed these episodes — from Hegseth’s handling of military strikes to the administration’s treatment of the press corps at the Pentagon and now the subpoenas of Times reporters — as part of a consistent pattern he says should worry Americans regardless of party. His Saturday statement did not name Vice President JD Vance or reference him directly, but it lands amid a wider Democratic critique of the administration’s approach to media oversight and military transparency that Schumer, Warren and other Senate Democrats have pressed throughout 2026.
As of Saturday afternoon, the White House had not responded to requests for comment on the subpoenas. Clayton and the subpoenaed Times reporters are both expected before separate proceedings on Wednesday — Clayton at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, and the journalists before the federal grand jury in Manhattan — setting up a week in which the standoff between the administration and the press is likely to intensify further.