Hannah Natanson, who has been covering President Donald Trump’s transformation of the federal government, had a phone and a Garmin watch seized in the search of her Virginia home, the Post reported.<\/b>
\nHannah Natanson, who has been covering President Donald Trump’s transformation of the federal government, had a phone and a Garmin watch seized in the search of her Virginia home, the Post reported.
WASHINGTON FBI agents searched a reporter\u2019s home on Wednesday as part of a leak investigation involving a Pentagon contractor accused of sharing classified information, the Justice Department said.
Hannah Natanson, who has been covering President Donald Trump\u2019s transformation of the federal government, had a phone and a Garmin watch seized in the search of her Virginia home, the Post reported. Natanson has reported extensively on the federal workforce, and recently she published a piece describing how she gained hundreds of new sources \u2014 leading one colleague to call her \u201cthe federal government whisperer.\u201d
While classified documents investigations aren\u2019t unusual, the search of a reporter\u2019s home marks an escalation in the government\u2019s efforts to crack down on leaks.
\u201cLeaking classified information puts America\u2019s national security and the safety of our military heroes in serious jeopardy,\u201d White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a post on X. \u201cPresident Trump has zero tolerance for it and will continue to aggressively crack down on these illegal acts moving forward.\u201d
An affidavit says the search was related to an investigation into a system administrator in Maryland who authorities allege took home classified reports, the Post reported. The system administrator, Aurelio Perez-Lugones, was charged earlier this month with unlawful retention of national defense information, according to court papers.
Perez-Lugones, who held a top secret security clearance, is accused of printing classified and sensitive reports at work. In a search of his Maryland home and car this month, authorities found documents marked \u201cSECRET,\u201d including one in a lunchbox, according to court papers.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said the search was done at the request of the Defense Department and said the journalist was \u201cobtaining and reporting classified and illegally leaked information from a Pentagon contractor.\u201d
Trump\u2019s Republican administration \u201cwill not tolerate illegal leaks of classified information that, when reported, pose a grave risk to our Nation\u2019s national security and the brave men and women who are serving our country,\u201d Bondi said in a post on X.
An FBI spokesperson declined to comment on Wednesday. The said Wednesday that it was monitoring and reviewing the situation. An email seeking comment was sent to lawyers for Perez-Lugones.
The Justice Department over the years has developed, and revised, internal guidelines governing how it will respond to news media leaks.
In April, Bondi issued new guidelines saying prosecutors would again have the authority to use subpoenas, court orders and search warrants to hunt for government officials who make \u201cunauthorized disclosures\u201d to journalists.
The moves rescinded a policy from President Joe Biden\u2019s Democatic administration that protected journalists from having their phone records secretly seized during leak investigations \u2014 a practice long decried by news organizations and press freedom groups.
The aggressive posture in this case stands in contrast to the Justice Department\u2019s approach to the disclosure of sensitive military information via a Signal chat last spring involving senior Trump administration officials. A reporter was mistakenly added to that chat. Bondi indicated publicly at the time that she was disinclined to open an investigation, saying she was confident that the episode had been a mistake.
Bondi also repeated Trump administration talking points that the highly sensitive information in the chat was not classified, though current and former U.S. officials have said the posting of the launch times of aircraft and the times that bombs would be released before those pilots were even in the air would have been classified.<\/p>\n