FBI agents searched the home of a Washington Post reporter Wednesday as part of an investigation into a government contractor accused of leaking classified information, the Justice Department claimed.
Journalist Hannah Natanson was told she is not a target of the probe, the Post said. Federal agents nevertheless seized her personal and Washington Post-issued laptop, her phone and a Garmin watch in what the paper called a “highly unusual and aggressive” law enforcement act.
Natanson covers how the Trump administration is reshaping the federal government. In December, along with fellow government reporter Meryl Kornfield, she co-bylined a deep dive into how the so-called Department of Government Efficiency and the White House “broke the federal government,” based on interviews with more than 1,200 current and former federal workers.
The Post didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, but former executive editor Marty Baron called the search “a clear and appalling sign that this administration will set no limits on its acts of aggression against an independent press.”
In April, Attorney General Pam Bondi overturned a Biden-era rule prohibiting federal prosecutors from seizing and searching reporters’ phone and email records while trying to identify leakers. The move comes amid a wide-ranging campaign the administration has waged against the press, from banning certain journalists from the press pool to filing several high-profile lawsuits against major news organizations.
Reporters Without Borders, an international nonprofit organization, declared the president is “on track to join ranks of world’s worst press freedom predators.”
Federal law generally prohibits the government from searching and seizing reporters’ work materials unless the reporter is suspected of a crime. It’s unclear how the Justice Department addressed the 1980 Privacy Protection Act in Wednesday’s raid.
Bondi said the DOJ carried out the search on behalf of the Defense Department, which accused a Pentagon contractor of leaking information to Natanson, adding that the leaker “is currently behind bars.”
A search warrant obtained by the Post identified the target of the probe as Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a system administrator for an undisclosed contractor in Maryland.
Prosecutors allege Perez-Lugones accessed a classified system containing information he “had no need to know” and took notes on a notepad that he then took home, according to an affidavit obtained by The Baltimore Sun.
Bondi has been under pressure for months, with President Donald Trump reportedly complaining that she is weak and ineffective, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
The American Civil Liberties Union decried Wednesday’s search as an attack on the press’s ability to hold the government accountable and called for Congress to reintroduce and pass the PRESS Act, which would enshrine journalist-source confidentiality.
“We’re deeply alarmed by the search of a Washington Post reporter’s home, especially against the backdrop of the administration’s escalating war on press freedom,” senior policy counsel Jenna Leventoff told HuffPost.
“Intimidating journalists for source information undermines the fundamental principle that the press should be free to hold the government accountable.”