Kash Patel’s Subpoenas Against Times Reporters Collapsed in Court

A judge ruled the DOJ’s grand-jury demands “null and void” after the government admitted a “mistake.”

On Thursday, July 23, the Justice Department withdrew its grand-jury subpoenas against three New York Times reporters rather than let a federal judge throw them out. Judge Arun Subramanian, in the Southern District of New York, had given the government a choice: withdraw, or he would quash them. The department withdrew. Subramanian’s order declared the subpoenas “null and void.”

The subpoenas grew out of a Times story the White House hated. On July 8, the Times reported that Trump had flown home from a NATO summit in Turkey aboard an older Air Force One, because the Secret Service raised security concerns about the new jet gifted by Qatar. Two days later, on the night of July 10, federal agents went to reporters’ homes with subpoenas compelling grand-jury testimony. The Times later reported that FBI Director Kash Patel, at the White House, personally oversaw issuing them.

In court, the government’s case fell apart. A lawyer from the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office conceded that subpoenas sent to reporters’ spouses and to one reporter’s mother were an “error” and a “mistake.” Subramanian pressed the department on why it had not sought the information another way first, noting that its “own regulations and policies indicate that subpoenas are the last step, not the first step.”

The Times called the subpoenas “the latest salvo in an escalating series of attacks on journalists to intimidate them from engaging in reporting that the Trump Administration openly detests.” Its lawyers argued the demands violated “the most basic First Amendment protections for newsgathering activity.”

The collapse reaches beyond the Times. Narativ has learned that Melania Trump’s lawyers threatened Narativ with a lawsuit over its Zampolli investigation — a threat that lands one day after Patel’s subpoenas were ruled void. Narativ stands by its reporting.

Patel oversaw subpoenas a judge called void. The judge settled the narrow point: these subpoenas are dead. The pattern they belong to is not.