Fbi Agents Search Home Of Washington Post Reporter

FBI agents searched the home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson on Wednesday as part of a probe into a Maryland government contractor accused of taking home classified intelligence reports.

The search warrant for Natanson’s home was linked, according to The Washington Post, to the criminal case of Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a government contractor with a top secret clearance suspected of moving classified material to his car and home. They seized a cellphone and Garmin watch from Natanson’s home but told her she is not the target of the investigation.

A 10-page criminal complaint against Perez-Lugones makes no reference to disseminating that material. But prosecutors warned, in a separate filing, that they’re concerned Perez-Lugones could disclose that information if he’s released from custody while awaiting trial. A hearing on prosecutors’ effort to keep Perez-Lugones locked up is set for Thursday in Baltimore.

No charges have been filed against Natanson relating to the federal probe into Perez-Lugones.

Natanson has been at the Post since 2019, working first as an education reporter before shifting beats to cover President Donald Trump and the changes he brought to the federal workforce early last year.

"This extraordinary, aggressive action is deeply concerning and raises profound questions and concern around the constitutional protections for our work," Washington Post Executive Editor Matt Murray wrote in a newsroom email Wednesday. "The Washington Post has a long history of zealous support for robust press freedoms. The entire institution stands by those freedoms and our work."

"Hannah is a valued member of our union whose work covering the federal workforce has been essential in understanding the impact of the Trump administration’s policies," the Washington Post Guild wrote in a statement on X. "The extraordinary decision to execute a search warrant at a journalist’s home should shock and dismay everyone who cares about a free and independent press."

Trump and former Department of Government Efficiency architect Elon Musk worked to dramatically cull the size of the federal workforce in the months after Trump returned to the White House last January. For months, Natanson has shed light on that work, with detailed reporting on the government workers caught up in the effort to slash jobs, and on the impact it's had on major federal institutions.

“The Trump Administration will not tolerate illegal leaks of classified information that, when reported, pose a grave risk to our Nation’s national security and the brave men and women who are serving our country,” Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote Wednesday in a post on X. In her post, she also confirmed that FBI agents searched a Post reporter’s home but did not name Natanson.

Democrats in Congress are already going on offense.

“That is really astonishing,” said Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.). “And over the line. Normally, even in a criminal investigation, you would just start with touching base with the lawyer, and asking for, like a document production to jump straight to a search warrant is really dramatic. And for the media — a reporter — I just think that's outrageous. That's crazy.”

A DOJ official who asked not to be named said the affidavit for the search at Natanson's home remains sealed.

In April, Bondi rescinded Biden-era policies that protected journalists from being subpoenaed by federal officials and safeguarded their phone and email records, writing on X that unauthorized disclosures can “undermine President Trump’s policies” and “victimize government agencies.”

In Trump’s first term, his Justice Department obtained the phone records of journalists from The New York Times, Washington Post and CNN as part of a 2017 investigation into leaks. The seizures were disclosed by the administration of former President Joe Biden in 2021.

But Trump isn’t the only president to attempt a crackdown on the flow of information to journalists. Under former President Barack Obama, the Justice Department in 2012 secretly seized a wide tranche of telephone records of journalists at the Associated Press. The administration refused to disclose the reasons behind its push for the records.

Nick Wu and Josh Gerstein contributed to this report.