The Trump administration last week issued subpoenas to third-party phone service providers seeking the records of several New York Times journalists who wrote about the security capabilities of the president's new Air Force One jet, the Times said Monday.

The Times, which has asked a judge to quash the subpoenas, said the Justice Department made a "bad-faith effort to intimidate the journalists and chill their ability to report on the administration."

The request targeted three journalists, one reporter's mother, and another reporter's spouse. The motion was unsealed Monday morning by Judge Arun Subramanian of U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

The DOJ's request for records dating back to Jan. 1, the Times said, "strongly suggests that the department is using this investigation not to focus on any purported concerns arising from the July 8 and 9 articles, but instead to forage for information about the journalists' source relationships more broadly."

Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, issued the subpoenas last Friday, shortly after the Times reported that the new Air Force One ​lacked some of the security features of the older aircraft. The newspaper's reporters were ordered to appear before a federal grand jury in Manhattan.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told a U.S. Senate panel on Wednesday that the reporters were not targets of an investigation, but the subpoenas were aimed at identifying people who leaked sensitive national security information.

Both Republican and Democrat administrations have sought to compel journalists to reveal sources when probing leaks to the press, but media advocacy groups say the Trump administration has used subpoenas and search warrants too freely, including against The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.

Both the National Press Club and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press criticized the subpoenas targeting the Times.

"This sequence of events and the timing of the government's disclosures are deeply troubling for obvious reasons," the Times wrote in its motion to block the federal grand jury subpoena.

"They raise pressing questions about the conduct of this purported national security investigation and confirm the absence of any regularity in the department's use of the grand jury in this case. They also highlight why this court's intervention is urgently required."

Reuters contributed to this report.