Mark Wollschlager

2026-01-14 16:50:35

What Bill of Rights?

FBI executes search warrant at Washington Post reporter’s home

The search came as part of an investigation into a government contractor accused of illegally retaining classified government materials.

By Perry Stein

The FBI executed a search warrant Wednesday morning at a Washington Post reporter’s home as part of an investigation into a government contractor accused of illegally retaining classified government materials.
The reporter, Hannah Natanson, was at her home in Virginia at the time of the search. Federal agents searched her home and her devices, seizing her phone, two laptops and a Garmin watch. One of the laptops was her personal computer, the other a Washington Post-issued laptop.
Investigators told Natanson that she is not the focus of the probe. The warrant said that law enforcement was investigating Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a system administrator in Maryland who has a top-secret security clearance and has been accused of accessing and taking home classified intelligence reports that were found in his lunchbox and his basement, according to an FBI affidavit.
Natanson covers the federal workforce and has been a part of The Washington Post’s most high-profile and sensitive coverage during the first year of the second Trump administration.
In December, Natanson wrote a first-person account about her experience covering the workforce as President Donald Trump’s administration created upheaval across the federal government. She detailed how she posted her secure phone number to an online forum for government workers and amassed more than 1,000 sources, with federal workers frequently reaching out to her to share frustrations and accounts from their offices.
While it is not unusual for FBI agents to conduct leak investigations of reporters who publish sensitive government information, it is highly unusual and aggressive for law enforcement to conduct a search on a reporter’s home.
The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In April, Attorney General Pam Bondi rescinded a Biden-era policy that prevented officials from searching reporters’ phone records when trying to identify government personnel who have provided sensitive information to news organizations.
Bondi said in an internal memo at the time that the media should not be afforded such protections, noting leaks of government information during the Trump administration.
“This conduct is illegal and wrong and it must stop,” she wrote in the memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post.
But Bondi said that the Justice Department would search reporters’ communication records only when other investigative methods had been exhausted. The search warrant and seizures appeared to be Natanson’s first interaction with investigators.
Archive link to WaPo article