WASHINGTON (AP) — A Pentagon contractor was indicted Thursday on charges tied to the alleged sharing of classified national defense information with a journalist, a case that federal agents linked to last week’s search of a Washington Post reporter’s home in Virginia.
Prosecutors said Aurelio Luis Perez-Lugones was charged with five counts of unlawfully transmitting classified national defense information and one count of unlawfully retaining it, according to the Justice Department.
The case has been linked to the search of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s home, and it has drawn scrutiny from press freedom advocates who argue it reflects a more aggressive posture by the Justice Department in leak investigations involving journalists.
In a statement, FBI Director Kash Patel said Perez-Lugones was accused of taking home printouts of classified documents from his workplace and later passing them to a reporter. The Justice Department news release did not name the reporter or the reporter’s employer, and the indictment was not immediately made public.
Authorities said the reporter co-wrote and contributed to at least five articles that contained classified information provided by Perez-Lugones. Investigators also said they found phone messages between Perez-Lugones and the reporter in which they discussed the information that he provided.
The report said Perez-Lugones told the reporter, “I’m going quiet for a bit … just to see if anyone starts asking questions,” according to the Justice Department news release. Attorney General Pamela Bondi said, “Illegally disclosing classified defense information is a grave crime against America that puts both our national security and the lives of our military heroes at risk.”
Attorneys for Perez-Lugones did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment, the report said. Perez-Lugones, 61, of Laurel, Maryland, has remained jailed since his Jan. 8 arrest, and he held a top secret security clearance, authorities said.
The Justice Department said Perez-Lugones was accused of printing out classified and sensitive reports from his work as a systems engineer and information technology specialist for a government contractor. The report said that in October, Perez-Lugones took a screenshot of a classified intelligence report involving an unspecified foreign country, pasted the image into a Microsoft Word document, and printed it out, according to an FBI agent’s affidavit.
Court papers referenced in the case described documents marked “SECRET,” including one in a lunchbox, found when investigators searched his home and car this month.
The indictment followed legal action around the earlier search of Natanson’s home. On Wednesday, the Washington Post asked for a court order requiring authorities to return electronic devices seized from Natanson’s home last week, according to the report.
The report said federal agents seized a phone, two laptops, a recorder, a portable hard drive and a Garmin smartwatch from Natanson’s home, citing a court filing. It also said a federal magistrate judge in Alexandria, Virginia, temporarily barred the government from reviewing any material from the devices and scheduled a Feb. 6 hearing on the newspaper’s request.
In a statement, the Post said, “The outrageous seizure of our reporter’s confidential newsgathering materials chills speech, cripples reporting, and inflicts irreparable harm every day the government keeps its hands on these materials.”
The report said Natanson has been covering Republican President Donald Trump’s transformation of the federal government. It added that the Post recently published a piece in which she described gaining hundreds of new sources from the federal workforce, and that one colleague called her “the federal government whisperer”.