Trump Handed His Acting AG a Stack of News Articles with "Treason" Written in Sharpie — The DOJ Then Tried to Drag Post and Journal Reporters Before a Grand Jury, and Backed Down

The president printed out news stories he didn't like, wrote "Treason" across them in Sharpie, and handed the stack to his acting attorney general. Within weeks, the Justice Department was trying to force the reporters who wrote them to testify before a grand jury.

What happened

The Washington Post reported on June 23, 2026, that the Justice Department took the extraordinary step of issuing subpoenas this spring to compel reporters from The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal to testify under oath before a federal grand jury — then withdrew them earlier this month after the news organizations challenged them.

The targets:

• Ellen Nakashima, a prominent national security reporter at The Washington Post who has covered the Iran war and U.S. military boat strikes in the Caribbean
• Three reporters at The Wall Street Journal (not publicly named)

The two newsrooms waged what the Post described as a secret legal fight in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. No reporter testified. The subpoenas were rescinded.

The Sharpie

This was not a career-prosecutor decision. Officials familiar with the matter told CNN that Trump personally pushed acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to issue the subpoenas.

The president delivered the demand in his characteristic way: a stack of printed articles, with the word "Treason" written across them in Sharpie, handed directly to Blanche.

One official said the DOJ's National Security Division was already looking at some of the stories' sources — but Trump's stack accelerated the effort.

What the reporters had done

The leak hunt traced back to Iran war coverage. The stories that enraged the president were carefully sourced reports about the risks of military action against Iran — reporting that, in the Post's own framing, turned out to be prescient.

The "treason" Trump identified, in other words, was journalism that warned a war would go badly, before it went badly.

How rare this is

The government has periodically seized journalists' phone records across administrations. But it is extremely rare to try to compel a reporter to reveal sources before a grand jury. The handful of prominent precedents:

• 2004: Time's Matthew Cooper and the New York Times' Judith Miller were compelled to appear before a grand jury in the Valerie Plame CIA-leak case (Bush administration)
• 2011: Reporter Mike Levine was subpoenaed during the Obama administration

Mark Schoeff Jr., president of the National Press Club, called the move "one of the most aggressive actions against a free and independent press in recent memory."

The newsrooms respond

A Washington Post spokesperson:

"The unwarranted subpoena of our reporter Ellen Nakashima — a clear violation of constitutionally guaranteed press freedom — was another sign of the government seeking to compel journalists to become instruments of its investigations."

Post executive editor Matt Murray told staff the subpoena to Nakashima had been withdrawn — but newsrooms remain on guard, because nothing prevents the DOJ from reissuing them.

Blanche's defense

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told CNN:

"Reporters are not our targets. We very much value the role that reporters play in this city and country."

He added that he has "a similarly important role to make sure that people that are entrusted with our nation's secrets do what they're supposed to do with that information, which — spoiler alert — means not sharing with reporters."

The phrase "reporters are not our targets" is difficult to reconcile with the fact that the subpoenas named individual reporters and ordered them to testify.

The pattern this fits

The subpoenas were not an isolated act. They were one move in a methodical campaign to strip away the legal protections journalists rely on:

• January 2026: FBI agents searched the home of Post reporter Hannah Natanson — who covers Trump's overhaul of the federal government — and seized her devices, as part of a leak investigation
• April 2026: Then-Attorney General Pam Bondi rescinded the Biden-era policy that had protected journalists from having their phone records secretly seized during leak investigations
• Spring 2026: The DOJ issued the grand jury subpoenas to Nakashima and three WSJ reporters
• June 2026: The subpoenas were withdrawn — without explanation

First remove the policy shield. Then raid a reporter's home. Then subpoena reporters to a grand jury. Each step makes the next one more thinkable.

Why the retreat is not reassuring

The DOJ won nothing and lost nothing it cannot try to take again. It gave no explanation for withdrawing the subpoenas, leaving legal experts openly questioning whether identical demands will simply reappear. The newsrooms had to fight the government in secret, in court, to protect their reporters from being conscripted as witnesses against their own sources — and they know they may have to do it again next month.

The chilling effect does not require a conviction. It requires only that a national security source now know that the president might print their reporter's byline, write "Treason" on it in marker, and set the Justice Department on the journalist who quoted them. That message was sent. The withdrawal does not unsend it.

A free press exists so that the public learns things the government would prefer it didn't — including, in this case, that a war was likely to go badly. The president's response to accurate reporting was to brand it treason and try to drag the messengers before a grand jury. He backed down only because two newsrooms had the resources to fight. The next target may not.