President Trump vowed Monday to catch the “leaker” who revealed that US forces were not immediately able to rescue the second F-15 pilot shot down over Iran — as he told again of the wounded airman’s dramatic weekend rescue.
“We’re looking very hard to find that leaker,” Trump said in the White House briefing room. “They basically said that we have one and there’s somebody missing. Well, [Iran] didn’t know there was somebody missing until this leaker gave the information.”
Trump explained that the leak could have endangered the missing pilot’s life.
“We think we’ll be able to find it out 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,’” Trump said.
President Trump holds a press conference accompanied by CIA Director John Ratcliffe in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, DC. REUTERS
Intense speculation and debate circulated online about which outlet might be in Trump’s crosshairs — though any publication that reported with first-hand original sourcing could find themselves ensnared in the leak probe, which could include the seizure of digital records.
Israel’s Channel 12 was credited by Military Times with being the first to report that a second American pilot was missing in a broadcast.
The Post was unable to find a clip from the live broadcast, but Channel 12 reporters Amit Segal and Barak Ravid — who also works for Axios — were among the earliest to post the information to Telegram and X, respectively.
“An American fighter jet was shot down by Iranian fire. A search is underway to locate the two crew members, according to a source familiar with the details. Read my article at @axios,” Ravid wrote at 8:54 a.m. EST on Friday.
Wreckage is seen from what Iranian authorities say is a U.S. military helicopter that crashed during a mission to rescue the missing American pilot of an F-15E that was downed earlier this week, in a handout image provided on April 5, 2026 in an location in Iran. Handout via Getty Images
“Search operation in Iran — for two American crew members,” Segal posted to his Telegram channel three minutes later.
Segal later broke news of the first pilot’s rescue in a post to X at 11:19 a.m., citing a “western source.”
Ravid did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment, and a representative for Axios declined to comment.
Segal exclusively told The Post on Monday that he was unaware if he was the first to report the news, but pledged not to disclose who tipped him off.
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“I’m not sure I was the first,” he said. “And anyway — I will protect my sources.”
Other outlets — including the Washington Post, Reuters, CBS News — also ran stories quoting US and Israeli officials and sources familiar shortly after the Channel 12 reporter’s tweet.
Elsewhere in the press conference, Trump said he spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday.
A senior administration official declined to name the suspected reporter.
The Trump administration in January raided Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s home in Virginia, with the FBI seizing her phone, laptops and other devices as part of an investigation into a government contractor accused of leaking classified information.