A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the government not to review materials seized during the search of a Washington Post reporter’s home last week.
The ruling, from U.S. Magistrate Judge William B. Porter, was in response to a legal filing by the newspaper on Wednesday arguing that the seizures violated the First Amendment and demanding the return of the items.
“The seizure chills speech, cripples reporting, and inflicts irreparable harm every day the government keeps its hands on protected materials,” the company said in the filing.
Judge Porter wrote that The Post and the reporter, Hannah Natanson, had shown “good cause” to maintain the “status quo” while the issues were being sorted out in court.
The F.B.I. conducted the search at the home of Ms. Natanson, a prolific chronicler of the upheaval in the federal government under the second Trump administration. Ms. Natanson wrote a first-person article weeks earlier about how she had used the encrypted messaging app Signal to communicate with government sources. A colleague described her as the “federal government whisperer.”
The authorities seized two laptops, one owned by The Post, as well as a company iPhone, a portable hard drive, a Garmin watch and a voice recorder.
Though the government has drawn criticism in the past for trampling on the rights of journalists in seeking evidence to punish leakers, never before had the Justice Department “raided a journalist’s home in connection with a national security leak investigation,” according to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
The search of Ms. Natanson’s home was in connection with the government’s investigation of Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a government contractor in Maryland who held a top-secret security clearance. He is accused of taking home intelligence reports that were discovered in his basement and in a lunchbox. President Trump, in public remarks apparently about the case, referenced a “very bad leaker.”
In the days after the search, the filing says, Post lawyers pressed the Justice Department to refrain from reviewing the documents “pending a discussion.” The government said it was busy extracting data from the devices and was not reviewing the information, the filing says.
In a subsequent exchange, The Post proposed that the government return the devices and that the newspaper treat the materials as covered by a subpoena that the news outlet also received in connection with the case. The government rejected the proposal.
The Post argues that the seizure of Ms. Natanson’s devices amounts to an unconstitutional prior restraint on The Post, meaning that the F.B.I. confiscated materials that the newspaper needed to continue its work. “I need my devices back to do my job,” Ms. Natanson said in her appended statement. “I also need my devices back to help my colleagues do their jobs.” Until she gets the devices back, Ms. Natanson said, she cannot gain access to her more than 1,200 contacts on Signal.
On a related point, The Post argues that the seizure was far too broad for its stated purposes. The devices, it argues, are capable of storing “multiple terabytes” of data and essentially house Mr. Natanson’s “entire professional universe,” including 30,000 emails, notes, interviews and much more. In her declaration, Ms. Natanson describes the apps, platforms and technologies that she has used to conduct her journalism, including correspondence with confidential sources. She notes that she had never communicated with Mr. Perez-Lugones “via any platform other than Signal or phone.”
“Almost none of the seized data is even potentially responsive to the warrant, which seeks only records received from or relating to a single government contractor,” The Post said in the filing, adding, “The government seized this proverbial haystack in an attempt to locate a needle.”
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