FBI agents search a Washington Post reporter's home and seize her devices in a leak investigation

What happened

The search followed the Jan. 8 arrest of Aurelio Luis Perez-Lugones, 61, a Department of War contractor and system administrator from Laurel, Maryland, charged with unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents; prosecutors say he took printouts of classified reports home and passed them to Natanson, that she co-wrote or contributed to at least five articles containing classified information from him, and that investigators found messages between the two.

The FBI began investigating after an Oct. 31, 2025 Post article contained classified intelligence. The Post also received a subpoena for communications between the contractor and other Post employees. Under guidelines Attorney General Pam Bondi issued in April 2025, prosecutors may again use subpoenas, court orders and search warrants against journalists in leak investigations, reversing a Biden-era policy that protected reporters' records.

The Post's executive editor, Matt Murray, called the search an extraordinary and aggressive action that raises serious constitutional concerns, and the paper's lawyers accused the government of violating the legal safeguards for journalists and Natanson's First Amendment rights. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and other press groups say the case reflects a more aggressive posture toward leak investigations involving journalists.

A judge first barred the government from reviewing the material in January, and on Feb. 24, 2026, U.S. Magistrate Judge William Porter extended that bar, ruling that the government may not conduct an unsupervised, wholesale search of the devices; he will review their contents himself in place of a Justice Department filter team, the government may keep only material responsive to the warrant and must return the rest, and he denied the Post's request for the immediate return of the devices.

Porter wrote that seizing a reporter's entire body of electronic work, including the tools of ongoing newsgathering, restricts First Amendment rights, that he had balanced those rights against the government's duty to protect top-secret information, and that letting the government read unrelated material, including confidential sources, would be dangerous; he said he hoped the search was aimed at evidence of a single crime rather than at a reporter who has criticized the administration.

The Justice Department's later grand jury subpoenas to New York Times reporters (Exhibit 94) and its October 2026 antitrust investigation of the White House pool networks (Watch 21) are separate entries.

Where it stands

Pending. No court has ruled on whether the search itself was lawful. The Feb. 24 order limits how the seized material can be examined, with the judge reviewing it personally, and the contractor's criminal case continues; he remained jailed as of that ruling. The coverage we could open ends in February 2026, so later developments in the review or the criminal case are not recorded here.

The administration's side

Attorney General Bondi said on Fox News that she and FBI Director Kash Patel authorized the warrant, that the case is about classified material tied to military operations that could jeopardize lives rather than about the First Amendment, and that the department has the right to recover classified information a reporter holds even unknowingly. In court, prosecutors argued the government may keep the seized material because it is evidence in an ongoing national security investigation.

Sources

• AP via WJBF (Feb. 24 ruling)
• Fox News (the search and Bondi's defense)