Judge prevents feds from going through reporter's materials seized by FBI

WASHINGTON (CN) — A magistrate judge on Wednesday blocked the government from examining data that it seized from a Washington Post reporter last week.

In a two-page order, Magistrate Judge William B. Porter granted the Post’s request for a standstill order, halting the federal government from reviewing any of the materials they seized from the property of Post reporter Hannah Natanson last week.

The government must preserve the documents that it collected during its search, Porter wrote, but not review them. The judge also scheduled an oral argument for early February.

Natanson, who covers President Donald Trump’s reshaping of the government, had her home searched by FBI agents early morning last Wednesday. The agents, who had a search warrant, seized a phone she used for work, two laptops — one of which was owned by the Post — a recorder, a hard drive and a Garmin watch.

She was home at the time, the Washington Post reported, and the agents were investigating Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a government contractor with top secret security clearance who has been accused of stealing classified reports.

On the day of the seizure, FBI Director Kash Patel said Natanson “was found to allegedly be obtaining and reporting classified, sensitive military information from a government contractor,” adding that the leaker has been arrested.

Perez-Lugones, who was arrested on Jan. 8 and charged with stealing classified documents, remains in pretrial detention.

In its request for the order, the Post called the seizure of Natanson’s newsgathering materials prior restraint and claimed that the government violated the Constitution’s free speech and free press protections.

The government took a “massive volume” of electronic data, it said, including years of materials and records of communication with confidential sources, including some protected by attorney-client privilege.

“The seizure chills speech, cripples reporting and inflicts irreparable harm every day the government keeps its hands on protected materials,” the Post said, asking the court to order the return of all seized materials, adding that “anything less would license future newsroom raids and normalize censorship by search warrant.”

Very little of the data seized is related to the warrant, the Post said, which seeks records related to a specific government contractor. One of the laptops taken was Natanson’s personal laptop that she sometimes used for work, and the devices also housed personal information, including medication, financial information and plans for her wedding.

“The government seized this proverbial haystack in an attempt to locate a needle,” the paper said.

The loss of her devices has prevented Natanson from contacting her sources through the Signal app, the Post said, making it impossible for her to publish unrelated stories she was working on before the raid. It also harms her relationship with her sources, who are less likely to work with her again “if the government is permitted to rummage through her files unchecked,” the outlet added.

The seizure came several weeks after Natanson published a story about her role as the Post’s “federal government whisperer,” in which she described her transition from working as an education reporter to working with sources in the federal government. Her most recent coverage before the seizure, coauthored along with five other reporters, was about Venezuela. Natanson, who was on a team of Post journalists awarded the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for their Jan. 6 coverage, has worked for the Post since 2019.

While journalists have been subpoenaed in regards to leaked documents in the past, the search and seizure of a journalist’s data by the federal government is incredibly rare, and has come under scrutiny from free speech activists.

“Using the FBI — funded by American taxpayers — to seize a reporter’s electronic devices, including her official work laptop, is a blatant violation of journalistic protections and undermines the public’s right to know,” Committee to Protect Journalists spokesperson Katherine Jacobsen said after the raid. “Without assurances that journalists can protect their reporting materials, accountability journalism will suffer a major setback, eroding yet another mechanism for government accountability.”

Representatives for the Washington Post did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

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