Judge blocks feds from searching Washington Post reporter’s devices

A federal judge refused the Justice Department’s demand to search a Washington Post reporter’s laptop and other devices after they were seized by the FBI in connection with a national security leak investigation. Instead, the court will conduct its own independent review. 

Magistrate Judge William Porter of the Eastern District of Virginia blocked the government from accessing information held on Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s electronic devices, saying a government search of her electronic work product “constitutes a restraint on the exercise of First Amendment rights.”  

The decision came after Natanson and the Post asked the court to prevent federal investigators from reviewing the content on the devices, which the Post said “contain troves” of sensitive source material and notes protected by the First Amendment. They also demanded that the devices, which include Natanson’s work cellphone, work laptop, portable hard drive, recorder and Garmin watch, be returned to her immediately. 

Porter declined to authorize the return of Natanson’s devices, but he ordered that the sensitive data they contain, which he said bares no connection to the FBI’s investigation, be returned. The DOJ can still access the “limited information provided authorized by the search warrant,” according to the 22-page opinion. 

“Given the documented reporting on government leak investigations and the government’s well chronicled efforts to stop them, allowing the government’s filter team to search a reporter’s work product — most of which consists of unrelated information from confidential sources — is the equivalent of leaving the government’s fox in charge of the Washington Post’s henhouse,” Porter wrote.

The warrant authorized the FBI to search Natanson’s home in eastern Virginia as part of a federal investigation into Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a systems engineer in Maryland who held a top-secret security clearance and has been charged with unlawful retention of national defense information. 

But the search and seizure of the devices quickly raised alarm bells for press freedom advocates, who argued that the prosecutor’s actions in obtaining the warrant violated the Privacy Protection Act. That law protects journalists by mandating that law enforcement must argue probable cause of a reporter violating the law before a judge to execute search warrants on reporters.

Porter decried the DOJ for its “failure to identify and analyze the Privacy Protection Act in its search warrant application,” which he said the court was unaware of when it agreed to approve the warrant. 

“Even so, had the government disclosed the PPA, the Court may well have rejected the search warrant application and directed the government to proceed by subpoena instead,” Porter said. “At the very least, it would have asked more questions.” 

The Post said in a statement Tuesday that “we applaud the court’s recognition of core First Amendment protections.”

The ruling is at least a partial win for Natanson, who won’t get her devices back while the court conducts an “appropriate search” to identify classified case information that must be protected. But the Trump administration, which she has reported on at length, won’t have access to the depth of sources who gave her information for her many accountability stories. 

 Natanson began her career at the Post in 2019 as an education reporter, but she became an integral part of the outlet’s coverage of the first year of President Donald Trump’s second administration. She focused on the dramatic reshaping of the federal government and its broad impact on the federal workforce. She also helped report on the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The Post won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2022 for its coverage of the attack.