Trump DOJ withdraws subpoenas
Inside the Washington Post this spring, the status of the Justice Department’s subpoena to national security reporter Ellen Nakashima was a closely guarded secret. The Post refused to confirm that she’d been subpoenaed, and normally chatty sources stopped talking whenever I asked about it, underscoring the sensitivity of the situation.
But it was evident that both the Post and the Wall Street Journal, which went public last month about receiving subpoenas, were working hard behind the scenes to challenge the government’s extraordinarily rare court orders.
Now it’s been confirmed. The Post published a story this morning saying that the DOJ “withdrew the subpoenas earlier this month after they were challenged by the news organizations, according to a Justice Department official familiar with the matter.”
Crucially, “none of the journalists testified before the grand jury,” Perry Stein reported.
Still, it was “a new front in the Trump administration’s aggressive tactics toward the media,” he wrote, since it was “the first publicly known instance in which the Trump Justice Department sought to compel journalists to testify under oath in front of a grand jury.”
The Post confirmed that the subpoena to Nakashima was withdrawn, and a person familiar with the matter confirmed to CNN that the order to the WSJ was also withdrawn a few weeks ago.
This legal battle between the DOJ and two top newsrooms stemmed from the government’s leak hunts. And those hunts were a response to President Trump’s anger over crucial and carefully sourced stories about the risks of military action in Iran — stories that turned out to be prescient.
“In particular, Trump has focused his ire on articles that provided details on how he arrived at his decision to launch the war, and what his advisers had told him as he deliberated,” the Journal reported last month. Reporting that Trump depicted as “treason” was, in fact, terrific and firmly in the public interest.
WaPo executive editor Matt Murray wrote in a newsroom memo this morning, “With the news out and the subpoena withdrawn, I want to reiterate our unwavering support for the First Amendment rights enshrined in our constitution, the legal protections afforded journalists, and our unblinking support of our journalists and press freedom.”
“This institution stands behind each of you,” he added. “It is in The Washington Post’s DNA to question, investigate, uncover and report. That’s why we’re here and what we’ll keep doing.”
While the subpoenas have been withdrawn for now, newsrooms will remain on guard against the possibility that they’ll be reissued in the future.
New reporting about an old note purporting to be from Nancy Guthrie’s kidnappers led to an emotional segment on the “Today” show this morning.
Savannah Guthrie said the reporting was an opportunity to “ask people — to, really, to beg people — to come forward” with information about what happened last winter.
Howard Blum wrote for Air Mail about the note’s contents a few days ago. NBC and other outlets followed up yesterday, confirming that the second note sent to media outlets last February — which investigators believed was legit communication from the kidnappers — said Nancy died shortly after the kidnapping.
After “Today” aired a Liz Kreutz package about this, Savannah was shown at the anchor desk with her colleagues. She said she didn’t have any comment on the new reporting (and said “I’m not involved in our coverage”) but “this is a moment to tell you that we need your help.”
>> A source close to the Guthrie family stresses that a million dollar reward is still on the table. The FBI’s tip line # is 1-800-CALL-FBI…
John Miller and Julianna Bragg’s CNN.com story says this: “The contents of the second note were known to CNN and a Tucson, Arizona, television station’s local news department that received both notes,” but “CNN and the news station agreed to a request from law enforcement and the family to hold off on reporting the contents of both notes so any future communications with the kidnapper or kidnappers could be authenticated.”
AI chatbots are fast becoming a way people find news. But the systems are only as reliable as their sources, and are prone to misinfo and manipulation. Meanwhile, the rise of AI threatens the business model for news publishers, many of whom say AI model makers are stealing their work.
NewsGuard, a startup that rates the reliability of news sources, says it sees a way to solve several problems at once. Today it is launching a new product, NewsGuard AI, that accesses and aggregates info only from vetted sources. The chatbot’s responses include citations and prominent links to news outlets. Perhaps most importantly for publishers, the product promises to share in the wealth, offering a 50-50 revenue share model.
I spoke with Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz about the launch. “We’re trying to line up with publishers instead of lining up in court against publishers,” Brill said. Read on…
>> New from Campbell Brown in the WSJ: “AI Needs Public Quality Testing.”
Trump books are so back? “Regime Change,” out today, has hit #1 on Amazon’s new releases list. In this new review, Tina Brown calls the book a “flabbergasting feat of political reporting” and says it “brings cool coherence to the inferno of our times.”
Last night on “The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart pressed Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan about their fly-on-the-wall access, asking, “Who’s the rat?” Of course, the pair declined to answer that or comment on the prospect of Situation Room tape recordings.
>> Also new in bookstores today: Kaitlyn Tiffany’s “The Housewives Underground: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the JFK Assassination Our Most Enduring Mystery.” Reviewing the book for the NYT, James Wolcott calls it “novelistic” and says it offers a “sympathetic understanding of what drives the driven.”
Emphasis on the again. In a late-evening Truth Social post, Trump claimed that “we are preparing lawsuits against ABC for false reporting” over the network’s coverage of the Reflecting Pool.
While it’s unlikely that Trump will follow through, his post shows how ABC’s December 2024 settlement has emboldened him: He referred to ABC “paying me $16,000,000 for past bad and inaccurate reporting” before lodging his latest threat.
“I like their money, which will be given to the U.S. Treasury,” the president added. Earlier, he also singled out ABC’s Jonathan Karl, claiming that Karl “was seen sticking his hand into the Pool, and trying to rip the rubber off of the surface.”
Yesterday Fox’s Peter Doocy asked Jeanine Pirro, “Is Jonathan Karl from ABC in trouble?” and Pirro refused to rule out prosecuting the journalist, causing MS NOW’s Chris Hayes to react, “This is insane. This is madness!”
Meantime, ABC is asking viewers to defend its local stations and “The View” from the Trump administration’s pressure, urging people to contact the FCC during the public comment period for the two proceedings that involve ABC.
Parent company Disney may be anticipating that Trump allies will fill the FCC’s inboxes with complaints, and thus wants to galvanize viewers and supporters to write in, too. Here’s my full story…
>> In response, the FCC said Disney is running “a campaign of misinformation to make its case.”
>> And in other ABC news, VP JD Vance’s visit to “The View” “scored the show its most-watched episode in just over a year and a half.”
Washington Post alum Paul Farhi has noticed something about the Post’s Opinion section: It frequently argues that “America needs more data centers to boost the economy, compete with China, and power the AI revolution,” but “only intermittently mentions” that its owner Jeff Bezos has a “vested interest in the topic.” Here is Farhi’s piece for Washingtonian about that…
Piers Morgan “has completed a $27 million raise for his growing YouTube empire,” Deadline’s Jake Kanter and Max Goldbart reported this morning.
One of the investors is Elisabeth Murdoch, “an interesting detail for media watchers, given that Morgan carved out his Uncensored brand from Rupert Murdoch’s Talk TV in 2025.”
“Journalists and other state media employees dressed in black and formed a human chain around Czech public radio headquarters in Prague on Monday, part of a larger protest against a government plan to overhaul the way the country’s public broadcasters are funded,” The AP reports. Here’s what the battle is all about…
>> Baltimore Sun correspondent Jeff Barker resigned from the paper yesterday after 25 years, posting to X that “I’m not saying anything readers can’t see for themselves, but The Sun has changed since its purchase by David Smith, executive chairman of the Sinclair Broadcast Group. I no longer fit there.” (X)
>> ESPN’s Linda Cohn, “who has anchored more episodes of ‘SportsCenter’ than anyone in history,” is retiring. The network will celebrate her career on Friday. (LAT)
>> Viewership for “CBS Mornings” plunged the day after Scott Pelley’s firing, a fact that “alarmed some officials at the network,” though the ratings ultimately returned to their usual levels, Oliver Darcy reports. (Status)
>> Viewership has been revised downward for Telemundo’s first few World Cup matches. (Sports Media Watch)
Google is taking a $75 million stake in A24, the indie studio behind “Backrooms” and other recent hits, “as part of a new artificial-intelligence research partnership,” the WSJ’s Ben Fritz scooped yesterday.
The deal marks the first time Google “has taken a stake in a studio,” he wrote. The partnership will bring together A24 with Google’s DeepMind AI unit to “create new tools for movie production and distribution…”
As Derek Thompson says, “everything is television.” The latest example: Instagram is “testing out horizontal video on Instagram for TV,” the feature that “allows viewers to watch social videos on the big screen in their living room,” THR’s Katie Kilkenny reports. The company “will also be experimenting with longer-form storytelling and episodic series with creators, in addition to trying live TV creator experiences on for size.”
Kilkenny’s colleague Alex Weprin reacted on X: “I cannot emphasize enough how big a deal this is. My bet: In 5 years Instagram will have a higher position on the Nielsen Gauge than at least a few major media companies.”
>> On a similar note, Amazon is adding a “dedicated Creator Hub to Fire TV this summer, creating a new section for videos and podcasts from digital creators to expand beyond social media and into connected TV,” Variety’s Elsa Keslassy reports.
>> Remember the dust-up about Bill Maher receiving the Mark Twain Prize from the Kennedy Center? Well, the ceremony is coming up next week, and it will air on Netflix on July 21. (THR)
>> Olivia Rodrigo is launching her own music festival, Daisy Chain Fields, “featuring female performers and female-fronted bands” including herself, as well as Chappell Roan, Garbage, Doechii and more. (Pitchfork)
>> Taylor Swift’s “Toy Story 5” song, “’I Knew It, I Knew You,” has topped the Billboard Hot 100 for a second week. (Billboard)
>> “Sean Evans has expanded the ‘Hot Ones’ universe yet again,” with “Hot Ones: Extra Heat” hitting Netflix on July 13. In a broadcast-type move, the streamer is premiering the show right after the Home Run Derby. (TheWrap)
This edition of Reliable Sources was edited by Andrew Kirell and produced with Liam Reilly. Email us your feedback and tips here.