While it’s difficult for Americans to even keep track of all the corrupt, incompetent and illegal schemes and scams of President Donald Trump and his regime, Americans can’t turn away from a recent move that could push the nation into becoming another authoritarian dominion.

Trump’s Department of Justice subpoenaed at least three New York Times reporters Friday in an attempt to find the source of Trump administration leaks linked to a presidential airplane given to Trump by Qatari royalty.

The Boeing 747-8 was a gift valued at $400 million given to Trump last year. Since then, the administration has spent $400 million to “upgrade” the plane to Air Force One standards, and Trump began flying in it last week.

Trump, however, left a NATO summit last Wednesday in Turkey in an older Air Force One jet after having flown the gifted airplane to the summit. When asked by reporters, Trump made an excuse, saying that he wanted the new plane to be flown without him to Mildenhall, a United Kingdom Royal Air Force base in Suffolk, England.

There, Trump switched back to the gifted plane and flew back to the United States.

The media pointed out that the odd and abrupt swap came as a dubious ceasefire with Iran collapsed and airstrikes resumed. 

“Iran and Turkey share a border, sparking speculation that the gifted Qatari jet lacked certain sophisticated security and countermeasure systems,” the Associated Press reported.

The New York Times, however, cited anonymous sources saying that the last-minute swap came at the insistence of the Secret Service, possibly putting Trump at danger of an attack by Iran as it flew near the country on the way out of Turkey.

At the time, Trump denied any security concerns and told the media he wanted military members stationed at Mildenhall to take a gander of the gifted jet, a transparent fabrication.

Having made it clear that the dubiously gifted jet, infused with $400 million dollars in tax money, was a risk to Trump’s safety and security, and that his story was an embarrassing lie, Trump and his minions at the FBI and DOD struck out, sending agents to reporters’ homes to dispense subpoenas. 

“The appearance of federal law enforcement agents on the doorstep of news reporters should shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution and the press freedom it protects,” David McCraw, a lawyer for the Times, said in a statement.

Information leaks have plagued governments, federal and local, large and small, since the beginning of the U.S. government. Arguments have long been made, and settled by courts, as to whether the government, as a last resort, can compel a reporter to reveal his or her sources as a matter of public safety and security.

It is inarguable that information leaked to journalists and the media have had hugely consequential impact on providing warranted transparency and accountability, for every level of government.

The power of the media is so critical that it was bestowed special protection in  the Constitution from the beginning of the American government.

Benjamin Franklin, as the head of the postal service, used leaked letters to out a colony governor as a British loyalist, secretly trying to buoy the royal government in 1773, creating the “Hutchison Letters” scandal and helping fuel the American revolution.

In 1971, the leak of the “Pentagon Papers” led to stories showing how the U.S. government had lied about and misled the American public about the Vietnam War.

In 1972, a then-secret source in the FBI linked information about a Watergate Hotel break-in that led to the impeachment and resignation of Richard Nixon.

In 2013, Edward Snowden leaked classified documents to The Guardian and The Washington Post, exposing secret surveillance of millions of Americans’ data.

In 2024, locally, the Sentinel and other media reported that a former acting Aurora police chief granted not only favoritism toward a high-level department official, but promoted her to a top job. Internal sources leaking details of the move to the Sentinel resulted in the story being made public and the top official resigning to avoid firing.

Throughout world and American history, the power and independence of the media has shown to be the most powerful way to provide transparency and accountability. Just recently in China, a plane crashing into the nation’s tallest building was erased from every Chinese news source by the government, made possible by the lack of a free and independent media there. 

Trump, since his first presidency has worked tirelessly to wrongly discredit the media and mold the U.S. government after those in China, Russia, North Korea and Iran, which dictate and control the news to their citizenry. He has repeatedly called the press the “enemy of the people.”

In just the past two years, the Trump administration has worked to usurp federal  restrictions in how it regulates airwaves to force news and other media companies to withhold all kinds of content Trump and his administration see as unflattering.

Spokespersons at the Department of Justice said last week that “to be clear, reporters are not the targets, those leaking classified information are.”

It’s just another example of the Trump administration either being incompetent, impotent or just outright lying. If the source of the leak is important to the safety of the United States or the president, figure it out. But an unfettered, unthreatened and independent media is, more than anything else, what holds Democrats, Republicans and every government official and employee accountable to the public. 

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