FBI searched Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson's Alexandria, Virginia home, seized her devices in Pentagon leak probe

On January 14, 2026, FBI agents executed a search warrant at the Alexandria, Virginia home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson and seized her phone, two laptops, a recorder, a portable hard drive, and a Garmin watch. The search was tied to a Pentagon-referred Justice Department investigation into Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a government contractor with a top-secret security clearance who was arrested January 8 and charged with unlawfully retaining and transmitting national defense information after prosecutors said he passed classified material to Natanson. Attorney General Pam Bondi said on X that the search was conducted "per the request of the Pentagon in relation to a leak investigation"; investigators told Natanson she was not a target of the probe, and Post executive editor Matt Murray said the Post was not either.

Bondi had rescinded, in April 2025, a Biden-administration policy shielding journalists from having phone records secretly seized in leak investigations, restoring prosecutors' authority to use subpoenas, court orders, and search warrants against reporters' unpublished material. Press-freedom groups called the raid unprecedented: the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press said it was the first time the government had searched a journalist's home in a national-security leak investigation.

The seizure captured years of Natanson's reporting across hundreds of stories, including communications with confidential sources unrelated to the Perez-Lugones case, and cut off her access to more than 1,000 sources developed while covering the administration's downsizing of the federal workforce. Murray called the search "extraordinary" and "aggressive," writing that it "raises profound questions and concern around the constitutional protections for our work." Reporters Committee president Bruce Brown said the raid "imperils public interest reporting and will have ramifications far beyond this specific case."

Updates

2026-02-24 — Magistrate judge barred DOJ from searching seized devices [4, 5]

U.S. Magistrate Judge William B. Porter ruled the government could not conduct an "unsupervised, wholesale search" of Natanson's seized devices, finding that letting a Justice Department "filter team" search her work product — "most of which consists of unrelated information from confidential sources" — would be "the equivalent of leaving the government's fox in charge of the Washington Post's henhouse" and would "authorize an unlawful general warrant." Porter ordered the court itself to review the devices and identify only material within the warrant's scope, denying a Post motion for full return of the devices. He also wrote that the government had failed to disclose to him the applicability of the Privacy Protection Act of 1980, which restricts searches of journalists' material, calling the omission "a matter of significant concern."

2026-05-04 — Second judge upheld bar on device search [6, 7]

U.S. District Judge Anthony J. Trenga, ruling on the government's appeal of Porter's order, sided with Natanson and the Post, holding that the Privacy Protection Act "bars the Government from searching in this particular case the PPA-protected materials that were seized." Trenga wrote he could not ignore "the harassing and chilling effects such a seizure could have on a reporter." No further ruling on the merits of the device search has been reported as of this writing (2026-08-10).