Trump in war update threatens to jail whoever leaked downed plane story, alerted Iranians

President Donald Trump on Monday threatened to jail an alleged leaker who divulged that the U.S. was searching for the second crewman of a downed F-15 plane that he said alerted Iranians to the search and made the U.S. recovery more difficult.

The plane went down amid the ongoing war with Iran that has seen the U.S. attempt to dismantle Iran's military capabilities, largely through an aerial campaign.

"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 said in a press conference. "So whoever there was, 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.'"

"And we know who, and you know who we're talking about, because some things you can't do, because when they did that, 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," Trump went on. "And it also made it much more difficult for the pilots and for the people going in to search for him. 

"We have to find that leaker, because that's a sick person, probably didn't realize the extent of how bad it was," he went on. "I can't imagine that the person did, but we're going to find out it's national security, and the person that did the story will go to jail if he doesn't say."

Both members of the crew were ultimately rescued over the Easter weekend.

Ben Whedon is the Chief Political Correspondent at Just the News. Follow him on X.