FBI Spied on Washington Post Reporter Prior To Raiding Their Home

The FBI spied on Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson prior to raiding her home in Virginia. The bureau also obtained search warrants that allowed agents to force Natanson to unlock her devices if they were biometrically secured and depicted her as a reporter involved in a criminal conspiracy.

On January 14, the FBI seized Natanson’s work laptop, personal laptop, iPhone, a terabyte hard drive, and Garmin running watch. The search warrants indicated that the raid was connected to an Espionage Act prosecution against Pentagon contractor Aurelio Perez-Lugones, one of Natanson’s alleged sources who had contacted her via the Signal messaging app. 

The same day that the United States Justice Department arrested journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia unsealed the FBI’s application for search warrants [PDF].

In the application by FBI Special Agent Matthew Johnson, the agent requested warrants to search Natanson’s residence, “a maroon 2013 Ford Fusion, and “the person of Hannah Natanson.” 

Johnson revealed that on January 10, three days prior to the application, the FBI conducted “physical surveillance” of Natanson as she entered and exited her home. “At approximately 8:40 a.m. yesterday morning, the FBI observed Natanson using an Apple iPhone while walking from her residence to the King Street Metro Station.”

The FBI asserted that there was “probable cause” to believe that Natanson’s electronics “contain classified national defense information unlawfully provided to Natanson by Perez-Lugones, potentially including classified information that has not yet been published. Through this warrant, the Government seeks to recover classified information that is evidence of Perez-Lugones's crimes and which, if disclosed, could harm national security.”

Or, more clearly, the FBI sought search warrants against a journalist to seize unpublished information, and to potentially prevent that information from becoming part of any news stories published by the Post. 

Johnson never explicitly accused Natanson of being a criminal co-conspirator, however, the application treated her like a co-conspirator and effectively criminalized Natanson’s journalism.

In fact, statements made about Natanson were starkly similar to statements that federal prosecutors made in the Justice Department’s unprecedented Espionage Act prosecution against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. 

Assange was accused of “encouraging” U.S. Army Private Chelsea Manning to “provide information and records from departments and agencies of the United States.” Similarly, the application alleged that Natanson similarly solicited information when she asked Perez-Lugones, “[I]f there is any way to get more detail on that [Government Agency] report and [Country 1] safely that would be a top priority for us.” [Note: Country 1 is Venezuela.]

Prosecutors contended that Assange had “knowledge that Manning was providing WikiLeaks with classified records containing national defense information of the United States.” Similarly, Johnson maintained that Natanson had “knowledge of the classified nature of the information she was receiving.”

The FBI sought access to Natanson’s Signal messages, especially because she described in a December article that she had “posted her secure phone number to an online forum for government workers and amassed more than 1,000 sources, with federal workers frequently reaching out to her to share frustrations and accounts from their offices.” It formed part of the basis for “probable cause” to seize her electronics. 

Natanson has “publicly written about her use of the Natanson Electronics to receive information, including (implicitly) from Perez-Lugones,” Johnson declared. “On December 24, 2025, the Washington Post published an article authored by Natanson that detailed her efforts to find and recruit Govemment employees and contractors as sources using Reddit and Signal.”

The FBI was interested in reading news tips that had nothing to do with the allegations against Perez-Lugones. Specifically, Johnson mentioned that Natanson had received tips “related to topics she does not cover, including national security.” She had referred to sources, who claimed that they had information involving risks to U.S. national security.  

“Review of the Signal chat between Perez-Lugones and Natanson revealed their use of Signal as a means to obfuscate and conceal their actions,” the application stated.

Once again, a key part of the prosecution against Assange involved accusing the WikiLeaks founder of taking “measures to conceal Manning as the source of the disclosure of classified records to WikiLeaks, including by removing usernames from the disclosed information and deleting chat logs between Assange and Manning.” 

The use of privacy tools is routinely criminalized in leak prosecutions pursued by the Justice Department.

Referring to the December article about Natanson’s use of Signal, Johnson informed the court that Natanson had “shared some of the Signal messages with her fiancé, a Government security clearance holder"—raising the possibility that the government could retaliate against Natanson’s husband and revoke his security clearance. 

Johnson argued that Natanson possessed information that could be “targeted by foreign adversaries and other criminals, who attempt to obtain such classified or other sensitive information through unauthorized accesses, including cyber intrusions.”

“[I]f Natanson were to become aware of the government's investigation and gain knowledge of this matter, she may attempt to create additional copies or back-ups of the information or to share the information with other associates, which can further exacerbate the risk of foreign adversaries or other criminals obtaining the classified and national defense information,” added Johnson.

In other words, the FBI maintained that Natanson could be wittingly or unwittingly targeted by an adversarial foreign power, and the government had to seize any classified information on her electronics to protect the United States.

Finally, the FBI’s application for warrants requested that the warrants permit agents to force Natanson to unlock her devices with a “press or swipe” of her fingers to the “fingerprint scanner of the devices” or to “hold the devices” infant of Natanson’s face for the “purpose of attempting to unlock them. 

It is unclear if FBI agents attempted to force Natanson to biometrically unlock her electronics while they were raiding her home.

The application was unsealed as a result of a motion filed by the Reporters Committee on Freedom of the Press (RCFP). 

Gabe Rottman, RCFP’s vice president of policy, said that the government ignored a federal law known as the "Privacy Protection Act of 1980, which created essential protections for journalists and newsrooms from government searches and seizures. Congress passed it out of concern that such raids could stanch the free flow of information to the public.”

"The government did not reference the federal law that prohibits, with few exceptions, raids targeting journalists or newsrooms to seize unpublished work,” Rottman further declared. “The government appears to have ignored a crucial press freedom guardrail in searching a journalist’s home and did not alert the magistrate judge to the law’s application in this case, let alone show how or if it had complied with the statute’s considerable protections.”

While Natanson has not been indicted for a crime, the fact is that the FBI presented her alleged actions as a reporter as if she was a part of a criminal conspiracy. 

Over a decade ago, President Barack Obama’s Justice Department singled out Fox News reporter James Rosen in this manner in order to further a leak prosecution against State Department employee Stephen Kim. 

Today, President Donald Trump’s Justice Department has taken this anti-press tactic to a logical extreme, and they did so to neutralize a reporter who was effectively amassing government sources that could potentially expose scandalous conduct and force some small level of accountability.