The FBI raided the home of The Washington Post reporter and “federal government whisperer” Hannah Natanson last week. The agency seized her private laptop, work laptop, work phone, a 1 TB portable hard drive, a Garmin running watch, and a voice recorder she uses for work, according to newly released court documents.
For the past year, Natanson had been covering President Trump’s reshaping of the federal government. One of her confidential sources, government contractor Aurelio Luis Perez-Lugones, who previously held a top-secret security clearance, is being investigated by the FBI for an alleged national security leak.
Through her phone, the FBI gained access to Natanson’s texts and voice recordings with confidential sources, including the 1,169 new sources who wrote to her, willing to share their experience working for the federal government under Trump.
Through her work computer, the FBI obtained extensive access to the Washington Post’s operations. In a court declaration, Natanson said that the FBI now has access to her Google Drive and Proton Drive, a cloud-based service that she used to store sensitive information in encrypted form, both of which contain confidential information from sources. The FBI also has access to the Post’s content management system, which she says “provides an enormous window” into all stories in progress at The Post, and the organization’s Slack.
“Slack is how the Post newsroom often shares information from sources, originates and debates story ideas, and discusses edits to draft stories. Thus, having access to Slack is like having access to the Post newsroom,” Natanson said.
Natanson says she was only in communication with Perez-Lugones through her phone or Signal account.
“Given the huge volume of materials the government seized, any government review of the materials will necessarily expose information relating to confidential sources, unpublished newsgathering, and other journalistic work product that has nothing whatsoever to do with Perez-Lugones,” Natanson said.
The Washington Post has asked for an immediate return of all seized property. On Wednesday, a judge ruled that the government can keep the property but blocked them from reviewing the material, for now.
It was the first time the government raided a journalist’s home for a national security leak investigation, according to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
“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 to the court. “Anything less would license future newsroom raids and normalize censorship by search warrant.”
