The FBI search of a Washington Post reporter’s home, and the seizure of her devices Wednesday, conducted as part of a leak investigation, was a highly unusual action and represented an “escalation” of the federal government’s efforts to undermine the free press, First Amendment experts said.
Jeffrey Pyle, a Boston-based lawyer who specializes in First Amendment law, said the FBI’s search was an “aggressive move by the Department of Justice.”
Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, called on the Justice Department to “explain publicly why it believes this search was necessary and legally permissible.”
Federal agents executed the search warrant at the Virginia home of Hannah Natanson, who has been covering the federal workforce and President Trump’s transformation of the government, in connection with a probe into a government contractor accused of illegally retaining classified government information, the Justice Department said. Natanson was present at the time, and agents seized several of her devices, including her phone, two laptops — one personal, and the other company-issued — and a Garmin watch, the Post reported.
Although investigations into leaks and classified documents are not particularly uncommon, the search of a reporter’s home by law enforcement is exceptionally rare, First Amendment and trade groups said.
“That step represents a significant escalation in investigative tactics and one that should concern anyone who values a free and independent press,” said the Washington, D.C.-based National Press Club in a statement. “The government has a legitimate responsibility to protect classified information. That responsibility, however, does not override the constitutional protections that allow journalists to do their jobs on behalf of the public.”
The Washington Post Guild, the union representing workers at the paper, said it “is alarmed and appalled by federal law enforcement’s search and seizure of reporter Hannah Natanson’s property and personal devices.”
“Hannah is a valued member of our union whose work covering the federal workforce has been essential in understanding the impact of the Trump administration’s policies,” the union said on social media.
Investigators said neither Natanson nor the Post were a target in the raid, Post Executive Editor Matt Murray said in an email to the newsroom. He called the search an “extraordinary, aggressive action” that is “deeply concerning and raises profound questions and concern around the constitutional protections for our work.”
Martin Baron, former editor of the Post and the Globe, said on LinkedIn the action constitutes a “clear and appalling sign that this administration will set no limits on its acts of aggression against an independent press.”
The warrant said that law enforcement is investigating Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a system administrator in Maryland who has top-secret security clearance and has been accused of taking home classified intelligence reports, the Post reported. Natanson has not been accused of wrongdoing, according to the Post, and Perez-Lugones has not been charged with sharing classified information or accused in court papers with leaking.
Some First Amendment experts said the search demanded further scrutiny.
“Congress and the courts should scrutinize that explanation carefully,” Jaffer said. “Searches of newsrooms and journalists are hallmarks of illiberal regimes, and we must ensure that these practices are not normalized here.”
Pyle, the Boston First Amendment lawyer, said it’s noteworthy the department relied on a search warrant as opposed to a subpoena. With the latter, the newspaper has a deadline for producing the requested documents and can challenge the subpoena in court. In this case, there was no adversary process where the judge heard from both sides before ruling, he said.
In the rare case a warrant is served, it’s typically done in a way where lawyers representing the journalist can request a temporary injunction “while they argue this is a violation of their First Amendment rights,” said Kelly McBride, senior vice president and chair of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at The Poynter Institute. “The way that this was served at her home, with an immediate raid, basically didn’t allow for that.”
It gives the appearance that this search is a “fishing expedition,” McBride said in an interview. “They want all her sources.”
Last month, Natanson wrote a first-person account about her experience covering the upheaval within the Trump administration and how she cultivated more than 1,000 new sources within the federal government.
“We don’t know whether some of the identities of those employees may be on the devices that were seized, and what protections are in place to prevent unmasking them,” Pyle said. “So this gives me grave concern on its face.”
This could be “the beginning of a very worrisome trend,” he added.
McBride said such drastic actions can have the effect of not only intimidating journalists, but the sources who would typically seek them out, in addition to creating “an air of doubt or scandal” in the minds of the public.
“This is a clear escalation. The [Trump] administration does not like the fact that the press is telling the stories from the point of view of people who have been harmed by the administration,” she said.
Moving forward, journalists will now have to think “about having their lawyers on speed dial,” McBride said. Some, she added, may consider moving out of the country, steps typically taken in places like Russia and Iran.
“This has never happened this way,” McBride said. “The impulse to avoid alarmism is waning here.”
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