Overview
- U.S. Magistrate Judge William B. Porter ordered the government to preserve but not review data from Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s seized electronics, allowing officials to keep the devices without accessing their contents.
- The judge set a Jan. 28 deadline for a Justice Department response and scheduled an early February hearing on the Post’s bid for the devices’ return and a bar on any use of the data.
- FBI agents searched Natanson’s Virginia home on Jan. 14, taking two laptops, two phones, a recorder, a portable hard drive and a Garmin watch in an action press freedom groups describe as exceptionally rare in leak inquiries.
- The Post argues the seizure violates First Amendment and statutory safeguards, says “almost none” of the material is relevant to the single-contractor warrant, and notes the DOJ also issued a grand jury subpoena seeking similar records.
- Prosecutors charged Pentagon contractor Aurelio Luis Perez-Lugones with five counts of unlawfully transmitting and one count of unlawfully retaining classified national defense information, citing messages with a reporter and articles that allegedly used the material.