JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
FBI agents searched the home of a Washington Post reporter this morning. The Justice Department says the search was conducted as part of a leak investigation into a defense contractor. The move adds to concerns about the Trump administration's aggressive stance toward the press. NPR justice correspondent Ryan Lucas is here in the studio with more. Hi.
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Hi there.
SUMMERS: Ryan, let's start off with the search. What can you tell us?
LUCAS: Well, the journalist whose home was searched is Hannah Natanson. She's been one of the lead reporters at The Washington Post on the Trump administration's efforts to reshape the federal workforce. She published a big story a few weeks ago about how she'd acquired more than a thousand new sources in the course of doing that coverage. Now, NPR obtained an email that the Post's executive editor, Matt Murray, sent to staff today, and in that note, Murray says that FBI agents showed up early this morning at Natanson's home. He says they seized her electronic devices, so things like phone, computers.
Now, according to Murray, the warrant indicated that the search was part of an investigation into a government contractor accused of illegally retaining classified documents. He says the Post was informed that neither Natanson nor the Post are targets of this probe. But still, he says the search is, in his words, deeply concerning and raises profound questions and concern around the constitutional protections for the paper's work.
SUMMERS: Now, I do want to get back to the issue of freedom of the press here in a moment, but I want to start by asking about the government. What, if anything, has the Department of Justice had to say about this?
LUCAS: Well, Attorney General Pam Bondi, in a post on social media, said that the Justice Department and FBI, at the request of the Pentagon, executed a search warrant - so a court-authorized search - at the home of a Post reporter who was obtaining and reporting classified and illegally leaked information from a Pentagon contractor. Bondi said the alleged leaker is in custody. This is in reference to an individual named Aurelio Perez-Lugones, who was charged last week in Maryland with unlawfully retaining national defense information. That's according to the Post.
Now, in her social media statement, Bondi said the Trump administration will not tolerate illegal leaks of classified information that, if reported in the media, could pose a grave risk to U.S. national security and to U.S. service members.
SUMMERS: Ryan, how unusual is it for the FBI to search a reporter's home in this manner?
LUCAS: So, look, it's entirely normal for the Justice Department to conduct leak investigations. There's nothing unusual about that. It is extremely rare, though, to take a step like this and search a reporter's home. The Obama administration came under a lot of fire more than a decade ago for just obtaining a reporter's records in a leak investigation. The Justice Department responded by putting in place a policy that provided protections to journalists in leak investigations. Those were, in fact, beefed up during the Biden administration.
Attorney General Pam Bondi scrapped those last year. She returned to a much more aggressive approach, and this search today is a prime example of that very pointed, aggressive approach to targeting journalists.
SUMMERS: Which brings us back now to that press freedom question. How have First Amendment advocates reacted today?
LUCAS: So, unsurprisingly, they have a lot of concerns about this. Jameel Jaffer is the executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute, and he said any search targeting a journalist warrants intense scrutiny because these searches can have a chilling effect. They can impede reporting that he says is critical to democracy. And he said the Justice Department should publicly explain why this was necessary and legally permissible.
And then there's Bruce Brown. He's the head of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. And Brown said a search like this is one of the most invasive investigative steps that law enforcement can take. And he called this a - in his words - tremendous escalation in the administration's intrusions, as he put it, into the independence of the press.
SUMMERS: NPR's Ryan Lucas, thank you.
LUCAS: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
