The Trump Justice Department subpoenaed four New York Times reporters last week over stories revealing security concerns around the Qatari-gifted Air Force One — and the beltway press corps is howling about the First Amendment while ignoring that someone inside the government leaked classified information about the president's plane to a newspaper.

Here's what happened: Times reporters published a story explaining that Trump ditched the new Qatari-donated Air Force One on his return from a NATO summit in Turkey, switching to an older model after threats against the aircraft. The administration says that's classified information about presidential security. The DOJ wants to know who talked.

Federal agents delivered subpoenas to reporters' homes, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, compelling Julian E. Barnes, Eric Lipton, Tyler Pager, and Eric Schmitt to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan. FBI Director Kash Patel and other DOJ officials met at the White House last Friday to discuss the matter before the subpoenas went out.

Before the Times even published, a senior FBI official contacted the paper asking it to hold the story and reveal its sources. The Times refused on both counts. The FBI wouldn't explain the specific security concern.

Now the institutional press is circling the wagons. CNN's Brian Stelter called the subpoenas "highly unusual, very aggressive, and very troubling," telling CNN the move is "an attempt to compel them to testify, to reveal anonymous sources." Times executive editor Joseph Kahn called it "retaliatory abuse of prosecutorial power." Times lawyer David McCraw said federal agents on reporters' doorsteps "should shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution."

Raw Story framed the subpoenas as Trump's effort to "silence reporters" and quoted Stelter extensively. The Tribune-Review, to its credit, included the DOJ's statement: "Reporters are not the targets, those leaking classified information are." The department said it "value[s] and appreciate[s] the important role that the press plays" but won't "ignore the law and stop investigating the people who work in the administration and think it's okay to leak classified information impacting national security."

That's the part the press doesn't want to discuss. Someone with security clearance leaked details about threats to the president's aircraft — and the Times printed it. The leaker committed a federal crime. The newspaper chose to publish anyway. When the government investigates the crime, the press screams censorship.

Bruce D. Brown of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press said the subpoenas "break from longstanding Justice Department practice" requiring reporters be approached only as a last resort. That practice, though, is internal policy — not law. And Stelter noted judges have previously struck down Trump administration efforts to force journalists to reveal sources.

The tension here is real and it's old: a free press needs sources, but a government can't function if every classified detail ends up in the paper. What's new is the speed — Stelter noted the subpoenas came "within a matter of days" of publication.

The question nobody in the press wants to answer: why should government employees who leak classified security details about the president's plane be shielded from accountability — and why should the reporters who enable them be immune from the legal consequences?