Trump Threatens to Jail Journalist Who First Reported Missing Airman

Donald Trump announced his plans to arrest and detain the individual that first reported the missing airman in Iran—as soon as he figures out who it is.

In the midst of a sprawling, nonsensical speech at the White House Monday, the president claimed that the government was going to hunt down the identity of the government employee that first revealed there was a second airman lost in Iran.

”But these two extraordinary rescues, because there were two, and as you probably know 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,” Trump said.

“They basically said, ‘We have one and there’s somebody missing.’ Well they didn’t know there was somebody missing until this leaker gave the information,” Trump continued.

Trump’s plan, however, apparently depends on expecting the countless news outlets that reported on the search and rescue mission to give up their sources.

“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.’ And we know who and you know who we’re talking about. There’s some things you can’t do,” Trump said.

An F-15 fighter jet was downed by Iranian fire early Friday. It was immediately understood when the plane went down that there were two crew members aboard. Each F-15 jet is manned by two crew: a pilot and a weapon systems officer.

The pilot of the two-seater aircraft was rescued later that day, but the search-and-rescue operation for the injured weapons system officer stretched until Sunday, when they were miraculously rescued from a crevice in the Iranian mountains. Iranian forces were also rushing to locate the fallen U.S. soldier, even placing a bounty on the crew member’s head.

Trump further suggested Monday that Iran’s bounty was the fault of the American media, who he claimed should not have revealed any information about the missing crew member.

The president did not share any names as to the leaker, the journalists, or the media outlets that he believed had publicized the story. But after his comments, some members of the press pointed toward Fox News and The Washington Post for being amongst the first to land the scoop.

Yet those media companies were not the only ones to report that one member of the military had been unaccounted for after the initial rescue on Friday: Reuters also reported at the time that just one of the aircrew had been rescued. Hours later, the outlet reported that a search and rescue was underway.