The President, His Plane and the Press
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This is Maurice Shema, the host of a new podcast from Serial Productions, The Marshall Project, and The New York Times. Last year, I spent three months embedded with a Capitol defense team. Their client had been on death row for more than 30 years, and now his execution date had been set. I followed along as the lawyers tried to prove something nobody had successfully done in three decades, that one of Texas' most notorious serial killers was actually innocent. The last 12 weeks. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
I was out for some drinks sitting on a patio. My wife and I were over at some friend's house for dinner, you know, having a really nice evening, a glass of wine and all that. My family and I had sat down to watch Sheep Detectives, a murder mystery. And right as we were about to find out from the sheep who had committed the murder, I get a call.
From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily.
And I pick it up and it's an FBI agent who identifies himself and says, I'm in front of your house right now. Are you coming home anytime soon?
When I got home, my wife was in the front yard with our kids and they were playing with some sparklers left over from the July 4th celebration. And she pointed to this unusual car sitting there across the street from our house. Inside were two FBI agents that were effectively staking us out.
My son is at the front of the house looking through the window, and he shouts, they're here.
Last Friday night, as my colleagues from the Washington Bureau of the Times settled into their weekend routines, FBI agents showed up at their homes.
And the agent identifies himself, and he basically says, I'm serving you with a subpoena.
And summoned them to testify before a grand jury. It was two sheets of paper. I mean, it wasn't even the official signed document. It was a photocopy of the subpoena.
The agents wouldn't say what the concern was, but I had no doubt what story they were talking about.
They were talking about the Air Force One story. It was an extraordinary move by the Trump administration in response to a set of stories published by The Times about the safety of the new Air Force One. It was a fairly ordinary interaction, except for the fact that this is not something that is supposed to happen with reporters. Today. We talked to one of the reporters behind those stories, White House correspondent Tyler Pager. It's Friday, July 17th. Tyler, thank you for making time for us.
Thanks so much, Michael. Glad to be here.
So tell us about the reporting that you and our colleagues did that sparked this unexpected and very unusual response from the Trump administration, these subpoenas that the FBI has delivered to our colleagues.
Yeah, so to set the scene, Michael, the president is traveling to Turkey for the annual NATO summit. And he's doing so in his new Air Force One, the one that's been donated by Qatar. And it's the first time he's taking the plane overseas.
Well, thank you very much.
And before we begin on the plane... He had just debuted the plane earlier this month, around the July 4th, 250th birthday celebrations. He flew it to Mount Rushmore.
The other plane was about 35 years old.
And it was time, and the president of the United States... The president had complained for years that it was embarrassing for him to show up at international summits on the old plane, feeling that it didn't reflect American greatness and American innovation. And the president loves this new plane. It's been a fixation of his to get rid of the dated Air Force One and debut this glittering jumbo jet that has been gifted to him by the country of Qatar.
And I went to Boeing, I said, who has the best one? They said, Qatar. There's never been a plane like it. And which he's put a lot of taxpayer money into.
Correct. So the Qatari government gives the president the plane and then they spend months and hundreds of millions of dollars retrofitting it because, of course, Air Force One is not any normal plane. It is carrying the American president.
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