A federal judge has prohibited the justice department from searching electronic devices it seized from a Washington Post reporter, ruling that the court will search the devices for documents related to a national security investigation itself.
In his ruling, magistrate judge William Porter criticized the Trump administration for omitting relevant case law in its application for a search warrant to seize the devices in the first place, but acknowledged “the possibility that classified national security information may be among the seized material” complicated the matter.
On 14 January, the FBI raided the home of Post reporter Hannah Natanson as part of an investigation into a government contractor accused of illegally retaining classified government materials. A self described “federal government whisperer”, Natanson has also reported on federal employees who were laid off by the Trump administration during Elon Musk’s Doge cuts – developing nearly 1,200 confidential sources from across 120 government agencies.
FBI agents seized Natanson’s phone, two laptops, a recorder, a portable hard drive and a Garmin watch. At the time, the Post called the FBI’s actions “highly unusual and aggressive”.
After the FBI raid, the Washington Post asked the court to order the devices returned, and Porter ordered the government not to immediately search Natanson’s devices until after a hearing.
In Tuesday’s order, judge Porter noted that an assistant United States attorney had applied for the warrant to search Natanson’s home in his court. Porter originally denied the request over its scope, but in his order described a two-day back-and-forth with the justice department to limit the terms of the search.
In his order, Porter reprimanded the federal government for failing to include and analyze the Privacy Protection Act of 1980 in its application for the search warrant, as the application involved a journalists’ first amendment rights. “This omission has seriously undermined the court’s confidence in the government’s disclosures in this proceeding,” Porter wrote.
Despite his criticism of the justice department, Porter said the government’s national security concern complicated the matter. At a court hearing on Friday, where Porter declined to immediately rule on the case, he acknowledged that Natanson “has basically been deprived of her life’s work”, by having her devices and sources seized.
“An appropriate search process must account for the need to identify and protect classified information before any materials are returned. But that does not mean that in all cases the government gets to conduct that search,” he wrote, adding that an unrestrained search could violate Natanson’s first amendment rights. “The court will conduct the review itself.”
In an article, the Washington Post called the ruling a “victory” for the paper and Natanson, adding that “allowing the government to search through her phone would risk the identities of her sources and could have a chilling effect on future sources who wish to speak to reporters.”
