WASHINGTON — Federal authorities are barred from conducting an “unsupervised, wholesale search” of electronic devices that they seized from a Washington Post reporter’s Virginia home while investigating allegations that a Pentagon contractor illegally leaked classified information to the journalist, a magistrate judge ruled Tuesday.
U.S. Magistrate Judge William Porter said he will independently review the contents of Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s devices instead of allowing a Justice Department “filter team” to perform a search. Porter said he balanced the need to protect Natanson’s free speech rights with the government’s duty to safeguard top secret national security information.
“The Court finds that seizing the totality of a reporter’s electronic work product, including tools essential to ongoing newsgathering, constitutes a restraint on the exercise of First Amendment rights,” he wrote.
The case has drawn national attention and scrutiny from press freedom advocates who say it reflects a more aggressive posture by the Justice Department toward leak investigations involving journalists.
Federal agents seized a phone, two laptops, a recorder, a portable hard drive and a Garmin smart watch when they searched Natanson’s home in Alexandria, Virginia, on Jan. 14. Last month, Porter agreed to temporarily bar the government from reviewing any material from Natanson’s devices. Tuesday’s order extends that prohibition.
“The Court’s genuine hope is that this search was conducted — as the government contends — to gather evidence of a crime in a single case, not to collect information about confidential sources from a reporter who has published articles critical of the administration,” he wrote.
The Post sought an order requiring the government to immediately return the devices to its reporter, but Porter denied that request. He said it is reasonable for the government to keep nothing more than the “limited information” responsive to the search warrant. The rest of the contents must be returned to Natanson, he ruled.
Allowing the government to search a reporter’s work material, including unrelated information from confidential sources, “is the equivalent of leaving the government’s fox in charge of the Washington Post’s henhouse,” Porter wrote.
Pentagon contractor Aurelio Luis Perez-Lugones was arrested on Jan. 8 and charged with unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents. Perez-Lugones is accused of taking home printouts of classified documents from his workplace and later passing them to Natanson.
The newspaper’s attorneys accused authorities of violating legal safeguards for journalists and trampling on Natanson’s First Amendment rights.
Justice Department attorneys argued that the government is entitled to keep the seized material because it contains evidence in an ongoing investigation with national security implications.
The FBI began investigating after the Post on Oct. 31 published an article containing classified information from an intelligence report, according to the government. The Post reporter co-wrote and contributed to at least five articles that contained classified information provided by Perez-Lugones, authorities said.
Natanson has been covering President Trump’s transformation of the federal government. The Post published a piece in which she described gaining hundreds of new sources from the federal workforce, leading one colleague to call her “the federal government whisperer.”
The Post says the seized material spanned years of Natanson’s reporting across hundreds of stories, including communications with confidential sources.
The Justice Department has internal guidelines governing its response to news media leaks. Last April, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi issued new guidelines restoring prosecutors’ authority to use subpoenas, court orders and search warrants to hunt for government officials who make “unauthorized disclosures” to journalists.
The new guidelines rescinded a policy from President Biden’s administration that protected journalists from having their phone records secretly seized during leak investigations.
Perez-Lugones, 61, of Laurel, Md., has remained jailed since his arrest. He held a top-secret security clearance while working as a systems engineer and information technology specialist for a government contractor.
Investigators found phone messages between Perez-Lugones and the reporter in which they discussed the information that he provided, authorities said. “I’m going quiet for a bit … just to see if anyone starts asking questions,” Perez-Lugones wrote after sending one of the documents, according to the government.
Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press.
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