A judge ordered federal agents Wednesday not to examine electronic devices they seized from a Washington Post reporter’s home last week in their criminal probe of a Pentagon contractor.
The news outlet had filed a motion earlier Wednesday demanding that federal law enforcement officials return the devices and asked that their content not be used in the case against the contractor.
The request, filed by the Post in the Eastern District of Virginia, asked the court to prevent federal investigators from reviewing the content on staff reporter Hannah Natanson’s devices, which the Post said “contain troves” of sensitive source material and notes protected by the First Amendment.
“Without an immediate standstill order from the Court, the government will commence an unrestrained search of a journalist’s work product that violates the First Amendment and the attorney-client privilege, ignored federal statutory safeguards for journalists, and threatens the trust and confidentiality of sources,” the Post said in the motion, which was the newsroom’s first public filing in the matter.
On Jan. 14, FBI agents executed a search warrant and seized Natanson’s work cellphone, work laptop, personal laptop, recorder, portable hard drive and a Garmin watch. The search was related to Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a systems engineer in Maryland who held a top-secret security clearance and is charged with unlawful retention of national defense information.
“We have asked the court to order the immediate return of all seized materials and prevent their use,” The Washington Post said in a statement to MS NOW. “Anything less would license future newsroom raids and normalize censorship by search warrant.”
Perez-Lugones has agreed to be held in federal custody in Baltimore while he awaits trial. Federal agents said Natanson was not part of the criminal investigation into Perez-Lugones, according to the Post, but alleged he had been messaging Natanson when he was arrested this month.
“The government must preserve but must not review any of the materials that law enforcement seized… until the Court authorizes review of the materials by further order,” the order, granted by Magistrate Judge William Porter, said.
A hearing on the Post’s motion has been set for Feb. 6. The government’s deadline to respond to the motion is Jan. 28.
Last week, The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP), a pro-bono legal organization, in the Eastern District of Virginia last week, filed a motion to unseal the affidavit that authorized the FBI search of Natanson’s home .
Natanson, in a detailed declaration, said the government’s seizure and review of her devices would jeopardize a myriad of First Amendment-protected activity that is not pertinent to any classified or national defense information she may have obtained or accessed.
“The material seized from me also includes information about my colleagues’ sources,” Natanson said. “I shared a byline with approximately 130 reporters during the past year alone.”
Natanson’s reporting has focused on the dramatic reshaping of the federal government during the first year of Trump’s second administration. She said she has connected with federal employees from more than 120 agencies or subagencies and multiple sources from every cabinet-level agency.
“The government seized this proverbial haystack in an attempt to locate a needle,” RCFP lawyers argued in the filing.
“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,” a spokesperson for The Washington Post told MS NOW on Wednesday.
