President Donald Trump told reporters Monday that an untimely leak put a downed service member’s life in danger.
Speaking from inside the White House, Trump threatened the media figures who published the leak with incarceration.
On Saturday, U.S. forces rescued a weapons systems officer wounded after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps shot down an F-15E fighter jet.
That action occurred one day after U.S. forces rescued the aircraft’s pilot in a remote area of southwestern Iran.
Despite the successful missions, the president on Monday voiced his extreme displeasure with the leaker and the unnamed media outlet.
“These two extraordinary rescues — because it was two,” Trump said in a clip posted to the social media platform X.
Then, as often happens, the president paused his prepared remarks to follow a different train of thought.
“And as you probably know,” he continued, “we didn’t talk about the first one for an hour. Then somebody leaked something, which we’ll hopefully find that leaker. We’re looking very hard to find that leaker.”
By “that leaker,” Trump meant someone in the government who presumably spoke to a media outlet.
“And [they talked about] there’s somebody missing,” the president added. “They basically said that we have one, and there’s somebody missing. Well, they didn’t know there was somebody missing until this leaker gave the information.”
Trump then pledged to threaten the relevant media figures with jail time unless they identified the source of the leak.
“So whoever it was — we think we’ll be able to find it out,” he added, “because we’re gonna go to the media company that released it and we’re gonna say ‘national security, give it up or go to jail.’”
Moments later, the president blamed the leaker and the media outlet for alerting Iranians to the downed weapons officer’s presence.
“When they did that,” Trump said, “all of a sudden, the entire country of Iran knew that there was a pilot that was somewhere on their land, that was fighting for his life, and it also made it much more difficult for the pilots and for the people going in to search for him.”
NEW: President Trump reveals a ‘leaker’ released vital information about the search and rescue mission for the downed pilot in Iran:
“We’re looking very hard to find that leaker… [Iran] didn’t know there was somebody missing until this leaker gave the information.”
“We’re… pic.twitter.com/X8zycP7sHI
— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 6, 2026
According to the ACLU, despite bipartisan support for the Free Flow of Information Act in 2014, no federal “shield” law exists to protect reporters from arrest and prosecution if they refuse to disclose a source.
Most states, on the other hand, do have such laws on the books.
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