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Lawyers for the Department of Justice (DOJ) dropped subpoenas of several New York Times journalists — and some targeting their family members — after a federal judge berated the Trump administration for its actions.

Earlier this month, the Times reported on security flaws of President Donald Trump’s new Qatari-gifted Air Force One jet. When Trump didn’t use the jet on his travels home from a NATO conference in Turkey, he had insisted that it was being diverted in order to show it off to soldiers stationed in Europe.

But the Times reported early this month that Trump didn’t use the newer jet because it had multiple security flaws. The report cited numerous individuals within the Trump administration who spoke anonymously about the subject.

Later in July, the paper was alerted to the fact that its journalists’ phone records had been subpoenaed by the administration to root out who the sources were. In addition to those journalists’ records, the White House also sought the phone data of their family members, including journalists’ spouses and parents.

The subpoena requests dated all the way back to January of this year — suggesting that “the department is using this investigation not to focus on any purported concerns........

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