Judge bars government from “wholesale” search of Post reporter’s seized devices

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A federal magistrate judge ruled that the Justice Department cannot conduct an “unsupervised, wholesale search” of electronic devices seized from Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson during an investigation into alleged classified document leaks. Magistrate Judge William Porter said he would independently review what is on Natanson’s devices, rather than letting prosecutors use a Justice Department “filter team” to conduct the search. The judge said the decision balances Natanson’s First Amendment free-speech rights against the government’s obligation to protect top-secret national security information.

Porter wrote that the court will review the contents himself “instead of allowing a Justice Department ‘filter team’ to perform a search,” according to the AP report. He also said he was extending a prior temporary bar that had prevented the government from reviewing material on Natanson’s devices while the case was pending.

The government’s request to search the reporter’s work product ran into limits, Porter ruled, saying 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.” The judge rejected a wider approach in part because it could sweep in information tied to confidential sources, not just evidence relevant to the warrant’s allegations.

Porter ordered that the government be allowed to keep only what he characterized as “limited information” responsive to the warrant. The remainder of the contents, he said, must be returned to Natanson. In explaining the concern, Porter compared the idea of letting investigators search the devices broadly to leaving prosecutors in control of sensitive journalistic material, writing that allowing such a process “is the equivalent of leaving the government’s fox in charge of the Washington Post’s henhouse.”

Federal agents searched Natanson’s home in Alexandria, Virginia, on Jan. 14 and seized several items, including a phone, two laptops, a recorder, a portable hard drive and a Garmin smart watch. The court’s order Tuesday extended the prohibition on the Justice Department’s review of those devices, following Porter’s earlier agreement to temporarily block the government from looking at the contents.

The investigation stems from reporting by The Washington Post that authorities say contained classified information. The FBI began investigating after the Post on Oct. 31 published an article containing classified information from an intelligence report, according to the AP account. Authorities said Natanson co-wrote or contributed to multiple subsequent Post articles that also contained classified information attributed to contractor Aurelio Luis Perez-Lugones.

Perez-Lugones was arrested on Jan. 8 and charged with unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents. Prosecutors have alleged that he took classified documents home in printouts and later provided them to Natanson. The AP report also said investigators found phone messages in which Perez-Lugones and the reporter discussed information he provided, and it quoted a message in which he wrote: “I’m going quiet for a bit … just to see if anyone starts asking questions,” after sending one of the documents, according to the government.

Natanson has covered a series focused on Republican President Donald Trump’s changes to the federal government, and the Post described her reporting as including building hundreds of new sources from the federal workforce, according to the AP report. The Post’s attorneys, as described by AP, sought an order requiring authorities to return the devices to Natanson immediately, but Porter denied that request and instead set the narrower approach of independent review and a limited retention plan.

The Justice Department has argued that the seized material is evidence in an ongoing investigation involving national security implications. The AP report said the Justice Department has internal guidelines governing responses to media leak investigations, and it noted that last April Attorney General Pam Bondi issued new guidelines that restored prosecutors’ authority to use subpoenas, court orders and search warrants to pursue unauthorized disclosures to journalists. The guidelines rescinded a policy from Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration that AP said protected journalists from having their phone records secretly seized during leak investigations.

Elsewhere in the case, Perez-Lugones, 61, of Laurel, Maryland, has remained jailed since his arrest, according to the AP report. He previously held a top-secret security clearance while working as a systems engineer and information technology specialist for a government contractor, and prosecutors have said he had the access that allowed him to remove classified materials.