The Washington Post is demanding the immediate return of computers, phones and other devices seized by federal agents during a search of a reporter’s home.
The federal government’s seizure, which was in connection with an investigation into a government contractor accused of illegally retaining classified materials, “violates the Constitution’s protections for free speech and a free press and should not be allowed to stand,” lawyers for the newspaper wrote in court documents Wednesday.
The seizure — which appears to be the first federal raid of a journalist’s home in connection with a national security investigation — not only flouts First Amendment protections and federal safeguards for journalists but also “chills speech, cripples reporting, and inflicts irreparable harm every day the government keeps its hands on protected materials,” according to the newspaper’s attorneys.
A federal judge should order the immediate return of all the seized materials, and “anything less would license future newsroom raids and normalize censorship by search warrant,” lawyers wrote.
FBI agents executed a search warrant January 14 at the home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson, an award-winning journalist who has emerged as the newspaper’s “federal government whisperer” collecting thousands of tips and stories from federal workers caught up in Donald Trump’s radical reshaping of government.
Agents seized a “massive volume” of data containing years of information about past and current sources and other unpublished information, including material she was actively using for her current reporting — and “almost none” of it had anything to do with the “single government contractor” at the center of the investigation, lawyers wrote.
That “wholesale seizure” suppresses the newspaper’s reporting as well as “Natanson’s current and future journalism,” unable to reach hundreds of sources “who overwhelmingly and self-evidently have nothing to do with the warrant,” lawyers added.
“Nor are Natanson’s confidential sources likely to work with her again, if the government is permitted to rummage through her files unchecked,” they wrote.
This is a developing story
