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From Flying Bribery Palace to Failed Leak Investigation to Catering Truck
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WaPo has an absolutely stupendous story about how Trump took a third plane — not the Flying Bribery Palace, not even the Old Air Force One we “saw” him use in real time, but a nondescript military jet — from the NATO summit in Turkey last month to the UK.The story is stupendous for the sheer magnitude of the scoop and the import of exposing how Trump used the traveling press corps as bait for any Iranian attack; for the many different kinds of sources it relied on to tell the story; for the visual journalism that showed, step-by-step, how Trump pulled off the subterfuge of transferring from Old Air Force One to the military jet…
… and for the way it recontextualized Trump’s public statements in real time.
Asked why reporters had been instructed to lower the window shades on the plane in Turkey, Trump said that it was “because you’re probably on a dangerous flight because of the sleaze bags that we have to deal with.” Trump said that he has a “threat all the time” against his life, and that he is “number one” on Iran’s “list.”
“But if I go, you go. Right?” Trump suggested to reporters. “Perhaps someday you want to change professions.”
One of my favorite things about the story is that, among the various flight tracking accounts WaPo used to reconstruct the flights of all three jets, one was called The New Area 51, invoking the way conspiracies are born from US military secrecy, but also hinting that random others had a far better idea of where Trump was than the press corps did.
The aviation account “Thenewarea51″ noted the C-32A’s arrival in Britain and its call sign, reporting that night that systems allowing for the aircraft to be easily tracked while in the air had been switched off. “Reach” call signs are often used for personnel transport flights and those that haul military equipment, according those familiar with the mission.
My other favorite thing — and no doubt many people share that opinions — is the description of how the man whose vanity led him to accept a bribe in the form of an insecure plane took to sneaking onto a third plane via a food truck.
To exit that plane without being seen by those uninvolved in the operation, Trump and several aides stepped aboard an airport catering truck, which was elevated plane-side using hydraulics and positioned at a door on the opposite side of Air Force One’s entrance, according to the U.S. official and other corroborating material.
As Bill Grueskin tracked in real time, for a brief moment NYT even made that their headline, before they once again pulled their punches from Trump.
The story may — should — destroy whatever trust remains between the press corps and Trump.
It also does so on a story where Trump has already gone nuclear to prevent its exposure (as NYT notes at the tail of its story, on which just Eric Schmitt was among those targeted) and WaPo describes mid-story.
After the Times reported about the security concerns in Turkey, and the fact that the Qatari jet lacked the same defensive capabilities as the older presidential aircraft, Mr. Trump was enraged by the leaks. The Justice Department issued subpoenas for grand jury testimony to the reporters who had been on the bylines of the stories, as well as some of their family members. Those subpoenas were withdrawn after a federal judge admonished federal prosecutors for the process involved.
Mr. Trump has continued to rage about information coming from his government that contradicts what he is telling the public, particularly about the war in Iran that he began on Feb. 28, according to multiple officials.
This changes the import of the leak investigation into NYT, which may, in turn, relate to the delightful viciousness of this attack.
Chris Geidner had a related thought, focusing on how Trump’s handlers had the press pull their window shades, which helped Trump sneak between planes, and noting that Jay Clayton immediately started investigating NYT’s journalists and then was installed as Director of National Intelligence before this story broke.
But it also makes the question I raised here newly important. Did DOJ subpoena NYT for what they published … Or what they didn’t?
As the NYT has reported consistently, even before NYT published the two targeted stories (hot link one, docket link one; hot link two, docket link two), a senior FBI person was threatening journalists and demanding sources.
Before the Wednesday article was published, a senior official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation contacted a reporter and a senior editor at The Times to ask that the article be held, calling it an issue of national security, according to a person familiar with the conversation. The F.B.I. official declined to explain the security issue. The official also asked The Times to disclose its sources for the article; the newspaper refused to do so. (A spokesman for The Times, Charlie Stadtlander, confirmed the account.)
I suggested in that story, there were several other journalists — some of the WaPo’s journalists might be included, as well as CBS’ Jim LaPorta — were chasing this same story. I described that those earlier calls suggest several other possible goals for the subpoenas:
- DOJ reacted the way it did because it learned the NYT had sources for the real threat, the specific threat from Iran.
- DOJ reacted the way it did because NYT had sources for the threat Israel raised, which Trump mistook to relate to the real threat, but as a result alerted NYT there was more there.
- DOJ’s overreaction led NYT to hunt down the real threat.
I’d add, DOJ may have reacted the way it did:
- To prevent NYT from pursuing the ruse story.
- As part of the subterfuge, to reinforce the idea that the switch was about counter missile defenses rather than something else.
Whatever else it does, it also means the first story DOJ targeted, which started by describing that Trump flew Old Air Force One, was entirely incorrect.
President Trump flew out of Turkey on Wednesday night on the old Air Force One instead of his new Qatari-donated Boeing 747-8 as a security precaution related to the resumption of hostilities with Iran, according to people briefed on the plans, who said the change came at the urging of the Secret Service.
Given WaPo’s uncertainty how Trump got back onto Old Air Force One so he could be seen exiting that to transfer to the Flying Bribery Palace,
Videos show the legacy Air Force One, after landing, coming to a stop in a place where the C-32A had briefly been parked. The hobbyist videos on YouTube do not show Trump exiting the C-32A or entering the legacy Air Force One, as the stairway entries faced away from the plane spotters’ cameras.
It’s not clear how Trump moved from the C-32A to the legacy Air Force One after landing, but he appeared before television cameras and descended external stairs from the legacy Air Force One about 10:56 p.m., according to a media pool report.
And NYT’s vagueness on that point,
Before that, unbeknown to reporters, Mr. Trump was brought by vehicle from the third plane that he had arrived on to the older Air Force One, boarded it through a different entrance and strode down the step from the upper left-side door as he would typically do, according to the U.S. official.
It might suggest other reporting NYT was doing was of equal sensitivity. In the magnus opus on the Flying Bribery Palace that NYT published after DOJ had to drop the subpoenas, they listed a bunch of things — beyond just the counter missile defenses — that Old Air Force One has that the Flying Bribery Palace does not. At least one of those may have been used for Trump’s escape and reentry: a bunch more doors, built for quick entry and exit.
The plane has had a lower side door with self-contained stairs, which is easier to protect. Mr. Trump used that entrance while boarding the old Air Force One last October after the Secret Service discovered what it suspected was a hunter’s stand hidden at the edge of the Palm Beach, Fla., airport.
Mr. Bush also used the lower stairs on Sept. 11, 2001, when he landed unexpectedly at an Air Force base in Louisiana, with military personnel armed with machine guns helping guard him.
But the retrofitted Qatari jet has no such entrance or a similar rear door with self-contained stairs, according to experts who examined photographs of the plane for The Times.
Administration officials did not dispute that. There was a “reduction of the number of airstairs” for autonomous entry and exit, a Pentagon official told The Times.
Trump would have a much harder time sneaking on and off the Flying Bribery Palace because it doesn’t have the escape doors in place for just that purpose.
WaPo’s huge scoop came at a remarkable time. It comes after DOD stripped Joe Biden’s Air Force Secretary, Frank Kendall, of his security clearance, scapegoating him for the NYT story, in which he was a named source.
The Trump administration has revoked the security clearance of Frank Kendall, who served as Air Force secretary under President Joe Biden, accusing him of disclosing classified information about Air Force One to the media.
Kendall has recently been quoted in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, in stories scrutinizing the security features of the Boeing 747 gifted by Qatar, the plane President Donald Trump is using as his official presidential aircraft.
Kendall told the Times that he was “surprised to see this plane used outside the U.S.,” given how speedily it was modified after the Qatari royal family gave it to the United States. To the Journal, Kendall expressed skepticism that the plane had been “maxed out” with security features, as Trump has said it would be.
In an X post Friday night, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Kendall was being stripped of access to classified information and his ability to hold any sensitive position following “unauthorized disclosure of classified information regarding Air Force One’s capabilities.”
“Safeguarding classified information is a non-negotiable duty. Those who violate that trust forfeit the privilege of access and any role requiring it,” Parnell wrote.
Such vindictiveness is the kind of thing that makes sources chatty. Plus, this story proves that Trump hasn’t found the sources he is looking for.
And it comes days after DOJ was due to provide Judge Arun Subramanian details (under seal) on whether it attempted to obtain information from the subpoenaed journalists via other means.
With respect to the July 14, 2026 application for a non-disclosure order, the Government should, on or before Monday, July 27, 2026, furnish to the Court on an ex parte basis any internal communications on or before July 16, 2026, concerning (1) the decision to seek the non-disclosure order, (2) whether the application should or should not reference that the owners of the records were reporters, and (3) whether and when notification of the third-party subpoenas should be given to the reporters.
Upon DOJ request, Subramanian extended this deadline to last Friday, long enough to get both Clayton and Todd Blanche confirmed before any fallout.
As he considers Friday’s materials (if, indeed, DOJ met his extended deadline), Judge Subramanian will have this story to contemplate as well: the evidence that the story Trump was chasing was not in fact what he claimed, the evidence that the story for which DOJ starting obtaining subpoenas was not just not classified, but was not true at all.
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