A federal judge has barred the FBI from examining the electronic devices its agents seized last week from the Virginia home of a Washington Post reporter until he can review the controversial case.
“The government must preserve but must not review any of the materials that law enforcement seized pursuant to search warrants the Court issued,” U.S. Magistrate Judge William B. Porter wrote in a two-page ruling filed Wednesday in federal district court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Porter was responding to a motion filed hours earlier by the Post and its reporter, Hannah Natanson, requesting that the FBI return her cellphone, as well as her work and personal laptops, a recorder, a portable hard drive and a Garmin smartwatch.
Both the newspaper and Natanson “have demonstrated good cause in their filings to maintain the status quo until such time as the government can respond to the motions and the Court can more fully address them,” Porter wrote.
Porter has ordered the government to respond to newspaper’s filing by Jan. 28, and he scheduled a hearing for early next month.
“The outrageous seizure of our reporter’s confidential newsgathering materials chills speech, cripples reporting, and inflicts irreparable harm every day the government keeps its hands on these materials,” the Post said in a statement.
It is the first time in U.S. history that the government has searched a reporter’s home in a national security media leak investigation, seizing potentially a vast amount of confidential data and information, Bruce D. Brown, president of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said in a statement.
“The move imperils public interest reporting and will have ramifications far beyond this specific case. It is critical that the court blocks the government from searching through this material until it can address the profound threat to the First Amendment posed by the raid,” Brown said.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
Natanson was home Jan. 14 when the FBI searched her house as part of an investigation into a government contractor accused of illegally retaining classified materials.
“Investigators told Natanson that she is not the focus of the probe,” the Post reported that day.
But Attorney General Pam Bondi said on X that the Defense Department requested the search “at the home of a Washington Post journalist who was obtaining and reporting classified and illegally leaked information from a Pentagon contractor.”
President Donald Trump told reporters that “the leaker on Venezuela” has been found and is in jail. He did not name the person, nor did he provide any context for the remark.
In an email to the newsroom, Post Executive Editor Matt Murray told staffers the newspaper was not the target of an FBI investigation. He said the “extraordinary, aggressive” action “raises profound questions and concern around the constitutional protections for our work.”
The contractor who is being investigated is Navy veteran Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a system administrator in Maryland. He has been charged with “unlawful retention of national defense information,” according to a criminal complaint filed Jan. 9 in U.S. District Court for Maryland.
The FBI, according to the complaint, has accused Perez-Lugones, a Miami-born U.S. citizen, of searching databases containing classified information without authorization and either printing or taking screenshots of that material.
He has not been charged with sharing classified information or accused in court papers of leaking.
It does not appear that Perez-Lugones has entered a plea. His attorneys did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
Natanson has been writing stories about the Trump administration, in particular Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency’s dramatic culling of the government workforce.
Tim Stelloh and The Associated Press contributed.
