Federal judge orders DOJ to halt review of devices seized in FBI search of Washington Post reporter’s home

By Brian Stelter, Liam Reilly, CNN

(CNN) — A federal judge has blocked the Justice Department from examining Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s phone and computers for the time being.

Magistrate Judge William B. Porter granted The Post’s motion for a “standstill order” in the case shortly after the newspaper sought one on Wednesday.

“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 magistrate judge wrote.

Porter scheduled oral arguments for February 6.

Natanson’s devices were seized in an extraordinary pre-dawn FBI raid last week. According to The Post, government lawyers told the publication that Natanson’s phone contacts, emails and other records would not be substantively reviewed until this week at the earliest, which explains why The Post went to court on Wednesday.

The search warrant at Natanson’s home was related to an investigation into Aurelio Luis Perez-Lugones, a government contractor with top-level security clearances, who was arrested on January 8 and charged with illegally retaining classified documents.

Government seizures of reporter records are exceedingly rare in the US, and The Post immediately decried the action.

On Wednesday, the publication filed two motions in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, seeking to block the government’s review of Natanson’s materials and to compel the return of her devices.

The Post said the FBI took two phones, two laptops, a Garmin watch, a portable hard drive and a recording device.

“The federal government’s wholesale seizure of a reporter’s confidential newsgathering materials violates the Constitution’s protections for free speech and a free press and should not be allowed to stand,” The Post’s attorneys stated in the court filing.

Without a court order, The Post said, the Justice Department will conduct an “unrestrained search” of a journalist’s newsgathering tools in a way that “violates the First Amendment and the attorney-client privilege, ignores federal statutory safeguards for journalists, and threatens the trust and confidentiality of sources.”

“The Court should order the immediate return of all seized materials,” the Post stated. “Anything less would license future newsroom raids and normalize censorship by search warrant.”

Natanson has not been accused of any wrongdoing, and it is not a crime in the US for journalists to obtain or report on leaked documents, even when the sources who disclose them face legal consequences.

Days before the raid, Natanson, who has spent the past year as the Post’s “federal government whisperer,” co-authored with five other reporters an exclusive story on Venezuela based on “government documents obtained by The Washington Post.

Both FBI director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi implied that Perez-Lugones was a source for Natanson.

They alleged that Perez-Lugones leaked classified Pentagon files to a Washington Post journalist. To date, however, Perez-Lugones has not been accused in court of illegally leaking any documents to the media, but only of illegally retaining them.

The Post argued in court on Wednesday that “almost none” of the data seized from Natanson is relevant to the government’s search warrant, “which seeks only records received from or relating to a single government contractor.”

The attorneys also noted that on the same day as the raid, the Justice Department issued a grand jury subpoena to the Post, similarly seeking “substantially” the same records it sought from Natanson.

“Nothing prevented the government from issuing a subpoena to Natanson instead of executing a search warrant,” which is how the government has historically operated, the Post’s attorneys wrote.

Instead, the newspaper argued, “The government seized this proverbial haystack in an attempt to locate a needle.”

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