Justice Department charges ex-government contractor with leaking to Washington Post reporter

By Devan Cole, Katelyn Polantz, Clay Voytek, CNN

(CNN) — Federal prosecutors on Thursday charged a government contractor with unlawfully sharing classified information with a Washington Post reporter, expanding the criminal case brought against him earlier this month for allegedly mishandling the information.

The case has become a flashpoint for press freedom advocates over the Trump administration’s approach to the First Amendment and lingering questions over how it approached the seizure of the reporter’s computers and phone days after Perez-Lugones was arrested.

Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s devices were seized in a pre-dawn FBI raid on January 14 pursuant to a warrant related to the investigation into Perez-Lugones. Government seizures of reporter records are exceedingly rare in the US, and The Post and press freedom advocates immediately decried the action.

The new charges represent the first time the Justice Department in Aurelio Perez-Lugones’ case has publicly formally tied his conduct to Natanson’s reporting. The previous court allegations against him only accused him of illegally copying and taking home classified information.

The Post and Natanson have not been charged with any crime. CNN has reached out to the Post for comment.

The charges approved Thursday by a federal grand jury in Maryland against Perez-Lugones include five counts of unlawfully transmitting the information to the reporter through an encrypted messaging application beginning in late October 2025 and continuing through early January. The grand jury also approved a single count of unlawful retention of classified information, a charge he had previously faced through a criminal complaint, which did not require sign-off by a federal grand jury.

The 11-page indictment against Perez-Lugones, a former member of the US Navy, refers to Natanson as “Reporter 1,” and references five articles she co-authored or contributed to that allegedly contained the classified information he allegedly provided to her.

The indictment includes redacted images of communications between Perez-Lugones and Natanson, including one in which he told her he was “going quiet for a bit” after he allegedly sent her photographs of classified documents.

“I’m going quiet for a bit … just to see if anyone starts asking questions,” he wrote, according to the indictment.

Perez-Lugones previously acknowledged he mishandled classified information, prosecutors said, according to a court hearing transcript obtained by CNN. Perez-Lugones told federal investigators he was angry about “recent government activity,” Assistant US Attorney Patricia McLane said during a detention hearing earlier this month.

If convicted, Perez-Lugones, 61, faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison for each of the six counts.

He’s currently behind bars and has not yet been formally presented with the charges previously brought against him, or the new ones and therefore hasn’t entered a plea to any of them.

Attorneys for Perez-Lugones didn’t respond to a request for comment.

A judge had signed off on the Justice Department’s warrant request for the reporter, allowing for the surprise search last week, but underlying court documents on what the judge was told, and how the DOJ had argued that a journalist needed to be searched, are still under seal.

Top Trump administration leadership has said publicly that Perez-Lugones allegedly leaking to the Washington Post put national security at risk. Yet it’s a major deviation for the Justice Department to condemn accurate news reporting as a risk to the nation, even when there is an underlying criminal case over a person with a clearance allegedly leaking, and courts have for decades protected journalists’ ability to publish even protected government information.

The criminal investigation into Perez-Lugones has raised significant questions around the Justice Department’s reasoning for subsequently searching the Post reporter’s home and seizing her electronics – a step rarely taken and widely criticized by both executive branch and congressional figures in past administrations.

Recent statements in court by the Washington Post say the electronics federal investigators seized from Natanson contained many source contacts she had dating back years. That also has raised questions of how the Justice Department may be accessing the journalists’ data since it took her devices.

A federal judge on Wednesday blocked the Justice Department from examining 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, scheduling oral arguments for February 6.

“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.

CNN’s Brian Stelter contributed to this report.

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