Washington Post decries Trump admin's ‘aggressive action’ against press freedoms as FBI raids journalist's home | Today News

FBI agents searched the home of a Washington Post reporter on Wednesday as part of a Justice Department investigation into a Pentagon contractor suspected of removing classified materials, as reported by Associated Press.

Hannah Natanson, who has been covering US President Donald Trump's transformation of the federal government, had a phone, two laptops and a Garmin watch seized in the search of her Virginia home, the Post reported.

AP reported that Natanson has reported extensively on the federal workforce and recently published a piece describing how she gained hundreds of new sources — leading one colleague to call her “the federal government whisperer.”

Although investigations involving classified documents are fairly common, searching a reporter’s home represents a significant escalation in the government’s campaign against leaks.

Executive editor Matt Murray said in an email to colleagues that the Post had been informed that Natanson and the newspaper are not targets of the investigation.

“Nonetheless, this extraordinary, aggressive action is deeply concerning and raises profound questions and concern around the constitutional protections for our work," Murray wrote. “The Washington Post has a long history of zealous support for robust press freedoms. The entire institution stands by those freedoms and our work.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi said that the search was done at the request of the Defense Department and that the journalist was “obtaining and reporting classified and illegally leaked information from a Pentagon contractor.”

“Leaking classified information puts America's national security and the safety of our military heroes in serious jeopardy,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a post on X.

“President Trump has zero tolerance for it and will continue to aggressively crack down on these illegal acts moving forward.”

The warrant says the search was related to an investigation into a system engineer and information technology specialist for a government contractor in Maryland who authorities allege took home classified materials, the Post reported.

The employee, Aurelio Perez-Lugones, was charged earlier this month with illegally retaining national defense information, court records show. He has not been accused of sharing classified material, nor do the court filings allege that he leaked information, AP reported.

Perez-Lugones, who held a top secret security clearance, is accused of printing classified and sensitive reports at work. In a search of his Maryland home and car this month, authorities found documents marked “SECRET,” including one in a lunchbox, according to court papers, AP reported.

The Washington Post said Wednesday that it was monitoring and reviewing the situation. An email seeking comment was sent to lawyers for Perez-Lugones, who is expected to appear in court on Thursday for a detention hearing.

First Amendment groups expressed alarm at the search, saying it could chill investigative journalism that holds government officials to account.

“Physical searches of reporters' devices, homes, and belongings are some of the most invasive investigative steps law enforcement can take,” Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press president Bruce Brown said.

“While we won't know the government's arguments about overcoming these very steep hurdles until the affidavit is made public, this is a tremendous escalation in the administration's intrusions into the independence of the press.”

Over the years, the Justice Department has created and updated internal guidelines on how it handles leaks to the news media.

In April, Bondi rolled back a policy put in place under President Joe Biden’s administration that barred investigators from secretly obtaining journalists’ phone records during leak probes—a tactic that has drawn sustained criticism from news outlets and press freedom advocates.

The moves again gave prosecutors the authority to use subpoenas, court orders and search warrants to hunt for government officials who make “unauthorised disclosures” to journalists. A memo she issued said members of the press are “presumptively entitled to advance notice of such investigative activities,” and subpoenas are to be “narrowly drawn.”

Warrants must also include “protocols designed to limit the scope of intrusion into potentially protected materials or newsgathering activities,” the memo states.

The aggressive posture with regard to The Washington Post stands in contrast to the Justice Department's approach to the disclosure of sensitive military information via a Signal chat last spring involving senior Trump administration officials. A reporter was mistakenly added to that chat. Bondi indicated publicly at the time that she was disinclined to open an investigation, saying she was confident that the episode had been a mistake, AP reported.

Bondi also repeated Trump administration talking points that the highly sensitive information in the chat was not classified, though current and former U.S. officials have said the posting of the launch times of aircraft and the times that bombs would be released before those pilots were even in the air would have been classified.