The Justice Department told U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian on Thursday it would withdraw subpoenas seeking grand jury testimony and phone records from New York Times reporters investigating security systems on Trump’s new Qatari-donated Air Force One jet, after Subramanian grilled federal prosecutors on why they issued subpoenas before pursuing other investigative steps and questioned whether sanctions were warranted over alleged perjury in an application used to secure a non-disclosure order. Subramanian formally declared the subpoenas “null and void” in a brief order following the hearing, and government attorneys acknowledged making mistakes in seeking them. A Justice Department spokesperson later criticized the judge, saying he “threatened our attorneys with sanctions unless subpoenas were withdrawn” and blocked the government from presenting its investigative process, while insisting the underlying leak investigation remains active. New York Times deputy general counsel David McCraw called the hearing “an important affirmation of our country’s commitment to a free press,” saying the subpoenas “should never have been issued in the first place.”

The subpoenas stemmed from Times reporting on Trump’s use of an older presidential aircraft to leave the NATO summit in Turkey in early July due to security limitations on the new Qatari-donated plane, and were issued by Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York whom Trump has since tapped to lead national intelligence. The Times said prosecutors sought phone records not just from reporters but from third-party providers covering journalists’ family members, including the spouses of two reporters and one journalist’s mother, with two subpoenas seeking records dating back to January 1, months before the disputed articles were even published, a timeframe the paper’s lawyers said suggested the government was “foraging for information about the Journalists’ source relationships more broadly” rather than investigating the specific leak.

During the hearing, Sean Buckley of the U.S. attorney’s office admitted that subpoenas targeting reporters’ mothers and spouses were an “error” and “mistake,” saying the government relied on a public database, and insisted the actual targets were the Times’ sources rather than the reporters themselves. In a particularly tense moment, Subramanian called prosecutor Kevin Sullivan up from the courtroom gallery to question him directly about whether his application for a non-disclosure order falsely claimed the investigation was not public despite it having already been reported, and why he omitted that the subpoenas involved journalists at the Times; Sullivan called it “an oversight” and told the judge he would not do it again. Subramanian noted the government’s “inadvertent errors” were “piling up” and warned that he did not want to see similar issues resurface, prompting Buckley to confirm the government would return to court if new subpoenas were needed. Times attorney David O’Neil told the court the record was “replete with bad faith,” warning that the subpoenas had already produced a chilling effect that damaged journalists and the public’s right to know about government conduct.

BREAKING: The D.O.J Withdraws Subpoenas for New York Times Reporters in Air Force One Leak Probe, After Federal Judge Sharply Reprimands Prosecutors Over Legal Errors and Alleged Perjury 🏛️💥