A federal judge rejected a Justice Department request to search devices seized from a Washington Post reporter as part of an investigation into alleged mishandling of classified information by a government contractor, ruling that the court would carry out the review.
Federal Bureau of Investigation agents executed a search warrant at the Virginia home of the reporter, Hannah Natanson, in January as part of an investigation of Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a systems engineer and information-technology specialist for a government contractor in Maryland with a top-secret security clearance. He was charged with unlawful retention of national-defense information.
The search of a journalist’s home is a rare action that underscored the Trump administration’s aggressive approach to identifying and prosecuting people thought to have leaked government secrets. Washington Post Executive Editor Matt Murray said in January that the news organization was told that it and the reporter weren’t targets in the investigation.
The judge in the Eastern District of Virginia said that given the government’s efforts to investigate leaks, “allowing the government’s filter team to search a reporter’s work product—most of which consists of unrelated information from confidential sources—is the equivalent of leaving the government’s fox in charge of the Washington Post’s henhouse.”
The court will instead carry out the search to gather the information the government needs to prosecute its criminal case, Judge William Porter wrote.
The Post said it applauds “the court’s recognition of core First Amendment protections and its rejection of the government’s expansionist arguments for searching Hannah Natanson’s devices and work materials in their entirety.”
The Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Post in January filed a motion to return Natanson’s items and denounced the search and seizure, saying it “chills speech, cripples reporting, and inflicts irreparable harm every day the government keeps its hands on protected materials.” The news prompted outrage from press-freedom organizations, including an amicus brief from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
The FBI said in an affidavit that there was probable cause to believe Natanson’s devices contained classified information, potentially including yet-to-be-published information that could “harm national security.”
