WASHINGTON — The FBI executed a search warrant Wednesday morning at a Washington Post reporter’s home as part of an investigation into a government contractor accused of illegally retaining classified government materials.
The reporter, Hannah Natanson, was at her home in Virginia at the time. Federal agents searched her home and her devices, seizing her phone, two laptops and a Garmin watch. One of the laptops was her personal computer, the other a Post-issued laptop.
The Post also received a subpoena Wednesday seeking information related to the same government contractor, according to a person familiar with the law enforcement action.
It is exceptionally rare for law enforcement officials to conduct searches at reporters’ homes. Federal regulations intended to protect a free press are designed to make it difficult to use aggressive law enforcement tactics against reporters to obtain the identities of their sources or information.
In an email to The Post’s newsroom, Executive Editor Matt Murray called the search an “extraordinary, aggressive action” that is “deeply concerning and raises profound questions and concern around the constitutional protections for our work.”
Investigators told Natanson that she is not the focus of the probe. The warrant said that law enforcement was investigating Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a system administrator in Maryland who has a top-secret security clearance and has been accused of accessing and taking home classified intelligence reports that were found in his lunchbox and his basement, according to an FBI affidavit.
“This past week, at the request of the Department of War, the Department of Justice and FBI executed a search warrant at the home of a Washington Post journalist who was obtaining and reporting classified and illegally leaked information from a Pentagon contractor,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a social media post Wednesday morning.
“The Trump Administration will not tolerate illegal leaks of classified information that, when reported, pose a grave risk to our Nation’s national security and the brave men and women who are serving our country,” Bondi wrote.
Natanson has not been accused of any wrongdoing, and the criminal complaint filed against Perez-Lugones does not accuse him of leaking classified information he is alleged to have taken.
The US has no law that explicitly makes it a crime for a journalist to obtain or publish classified information. In 2019, when WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was indicted under the Espionage Act for disclosing classified information, First Amendment scholars warned that his case could set a precedent that could be used against journalists. That issue was never tested in court because Assange and the government reached a plea deal in 2024.
In his email to the newspaper’s staff, Murray wrote: “Early this morning, FBI agents showed up unannounced at the doorstep of our colleague Hannah Natanson, searched her home, and proceeded to seize her electronic devices. According to the government warrant, the raid was in connection with an investigation into a government contractor accused of illegally retaining classified government materials. We are told Hannah, and The Post, are not a target.”
“The Washington Post has a long history of zealous support for robust press freedoms. The entire institution stands by those freedoms and our work. We have been in close touch with Hannah, with authorities and with legal counsel and will keep you updated as we learn more. In the meantime, the best thing all of us can do is to continue to vigorously exercise those freedoms as we do every day,” the email said.
Natanson covers the federal workforce and has been a part of The Post’s most high-profile and sensitive coverage during the first year of the second Trump administration.
In December, Natanson wrote a first-person account about her experience covering the workforce as President Donald Trump’s administration created upheaval across the federal government. She detailed how she posted her secure phone number to an online forum for government workers and amassed more than 1,000 sources, with federal workers frequently reaching out to her to share frustrations and accounts from their offices.
While it is not unusual for FBI agents to conduct leak investigations of reporters who publish sensitive government information, it is highly unusual and aggressive for law enforcement to conduct a search on a reporter’s home.
The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment, though the bureau’s director, Kash Patel, wrote on social media that the alleged leaked information endangered the military.
“This morning the FBI and partners executed a search warrant of an individual at the Washington Post who was found to allegedly be obtaining and reporting classified, sensitive military information from a government contractor - endangering our warfighters and compromising America’s national security,” Patel wrote.
Federal authorities in Maryland charged Perez-Lugones, a Navy veteran, on Friday with unlawfully retaining national defense information. He had an initial court appearance that day and is scheduled to appear again in court on Thursday.
In April, Bondi rescinded a Biden-era policy that prevented officials from searching reporters’ phone records when trying to identify government personnel who have provided sensitive information to news organizations.
Bondi said in an internal memo at the time that the media should not be afforded such protections, noting leaks of government information during the Trump administration.
“This conduct is illegal and wrong and it must stop,” she wrote in the memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Post.
But Bondi said that the Justice Department would search reporters’ communication records only when other investigative methods had been exhausted. The search warrant and seizures appeared to be Natanson’s first interaction with investigators.
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