Trump threatens to jail journalists in hunt to find leaker of Iran fighter jet story

President Donald Trump threatened to jail journalists at the media outlet that first reported a second airman was missing following the shoot-down of an American fighter jet in Iran last week.

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Both the pilot and the “back seater” were recovered by American forces in what the president, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan Caine described as separate, daring operations during a White House press conference on Monday.

The pilot was recovered within several hours, while the second airman was stranded in Iranian territory until early Sunday, when U.S. forces landed and rescued him.

Trump said that he will pursue whoever leaked information about the second airman — which the U.S. government had hoped to keep secret in order to prevent him from being captured or killed by Iran — and pressure the news media to assist in that investigation.

“We think we’ll be able to find it out,” Trump said. “Because we’re going to go to the media company that released it, and we’re going to say, ‘National security. Give it up or go to jail.’”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on which news outlet was the first to report on the second missing airman.

During the news conference, Trump explained why secrecy was important to preventing Iran from getting to the airman first.

“All of a sudden, they know that there’s somebody out there,” he said. “They see all these planes coming in. It became a much more difficult operation because a leaker leaked that we have one, we’ve rescued one, but there’s another one out there that we’re trying to get.”

He used a bounty as evidence that Iran was desperate to locate and detain the airman.

“So actually, the country Iran, put out a major notice — you all saw it — offering a very big award for anybody that captures the pilot,” Trump said. “So in addition to a hostile, very talented, very good, very evil military, we had millions of people trying to get an award, so when you add that to it, but we have to find that leaker, because that’s a sick person.”