A federal judge rejected the Department of Justice’s demand to continue its search of a Washington Post reporter's phone and other electronic devices for information that might help an FBI investigation into the leaking of classified information.
U.S. Magistrate Judge William Porter declined in his Thursday ruling to require the DOJ to return equipment seized from the home of reporter Hannah Natanson in January, saying the court would review her devices for any material relevant to the government’s investigation.
"Given the documented reporting on government leak investigations and the government’s well-chronicled efforts to stop them, allowing the government’s filter team to search a reporter’s work product—most of which consists of unrelated information from confidential sources—is the equivalent of leaving the government’s fox in charge of the Washington Post’s henhouse,” Porter wrote.
The newspaper welcomed the ruling on a case that has been closely watched by press freedom groups, who reacted with alarm at the search of Natanson’s home and the seizure of her devices.
“We applaud the court’s recognition of core First Amendment protections and its rejection of the government's expansionist arguments for searching Hannah Natanson’s devices and work materials in their entirety and placing itself in charge of determining their relevance,” The Washington Post said after the ruling.
The FBI seized Natanson’s phone, laptops, recorder, smart watch and hard drive as part of an investigation into a government contractor with top-secret clearance who allegedly shared classified materials in violation of federal law.
Lawyers for Natanson and The Post have argued that the seizure violated the First Amendment protection against prior restraint by impeding on their ability to communicate with sources and publish the news.
Porter, who signed the warrants granting permission for the search, ordered the DOJ to return all information on her devices unrelated to the case and decided that the court will conduct its own independent review of the materials.
“The government’s proposed remedy—that she simply buy a new phone and laptop, set up new accounts, and start from scratch—is unjust and unreasonable,” Porter wrote in his decision.
Press freedom and First Amendment advocacy groups — including the Freedom of the Press Foundation, the ACLU, PEN America and the Society of Professional Journalists — have raised alarm that the search constituted a serious infringement on journalistic protections.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the order.
The DOJ’s standoff with The Post is the latest in a series of steps taken by the Trump administration targeting the press, with Attorney General Pam Bondi rescinding policies adopted by the Biden administration that safeguarded journalists from federal subpoenas last year.
The administration has also restricted the media’s access to the Pentagon under strict new guidelines, and Trump has filed lawsuits against The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the British Broadcasting Corporation and other outlets since returning to office.
Porter wrote in his decision that he was unaware of the Privacy Protection Act, a 1980 law that protects journalists from the government seizing or searching their “work product materials” in federal investigations, barring extraordinary circumstances under which the attorney general authorizes a search.
“This Court’s review was limited to probable cause, and the Court accepts that gap in its own analysis,” he wrote. ”But the government’s failure to identify the PPA as applicable to a request for a search warrant on a member of the press—and to analyze it in its warrant application—is another matter. This omission has seriously undermined the Court’s confidence in the government’s disclosures in this proceeding.”
Porter noted that many lawyers for the government — including “counsel from the highest levels of the DOJ” — had several chances to note the statute’s relevance in the case but did not.
A DOJ attorney has suggested that an exception in the law permitted the proposed search of Natanson. However, during a court hearing last week, the judge lambasted the DOJ for not making any mention of the statute when requesting the search warrant. “I find it hard to believe that in any way this law did not apply,” Porter said, according to CNN.
Last month, after the Post and Natanson filed a formal request for return of her property, Porter temporarily blocked prosecutors and the FBI from examining her devices or data pending further legal proceedings.
Josh Gerstein contributed to this report.
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