The Washington Post is demanding in court docket that the federal government return digital devices it seized throughout final week’s FBI search of reporter Hannah Natanson’s home.
“The federal government’s wholesale seizure of a reporter’s confidential newsgathering materials violates the Constitution’s protections for free speech and a free press and should not be allowed to stand,” the paper wrote Wednesday in a submitting with the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
The Post’s attorneys requested that the court docket block the government’s assessment and order the return of Natanson’s seized devices, which included two telephones, two laptops, a Garmin watch, a transportable arduous drive and a recording machine.
Without such an order, the paper wrote, the Department of Justice will conduct an “unrestrained search” of a journalist’s newsgathering instruments in a manner that “violates the First Amendment and the attorney-client privilege, ignores federal statutory safeguards for journalists, and threatens the trust and confidentiality of sources.”
“The Court should order the immediate return of all seized materials,” the Post’s attorneys wrote. “Anything less would license future newsroom raids and normalize censorship by search warrant.”
The paper added in a press release on Wednesday: “The outrageous seizure of our reporter’s confidential newsgathering materials chills speech, cripples reporting, and inflicts irreparable harm every day the government keeps its hands on these materials.”
Last week, the FBI raided Natanson’s Virginia home as half of its investigation of Aurelio Luis Perez-Lugones, a government contractor with top-level safety clearances, who was arrested earlier this month and charged with illegally retaining categorised paperwork.
While each FBI director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi have alleged that Perez-Lugones leaked categorised Pentagon recordsdata to a Washington Post journalist, he has not been accused in court docket of illegally leaking any paperwork to the media.
Donald Trump advised reporters final week {that a} “leaker on Venezuela” is “in jail right now,” however he didn’t immediately join the arrest to the search of Natanson’s home.
Days earlier than the raid, Natanson, who has spent the previous 12 months because the Post’s “federal government whisperer,” co-authored with 5 different reporters an exclusive story on Venezuela based mostly on “government documents obtained by The Washington Post.”
The Post argued in court docket that “almost none” of the info seized from Natanson is related to the government’s search warrant, “which seeks only records received from or relating to a single government contractor.”
The attorneys additionally famous that on the identical day because the raid, the Justice Department issued a grand jury subpoena to the Post, equally in search of “substantially” the identical data it sought from Natanson.
“Nothing prevented the government from issuing a subpoena to Natanson instead of executing a search warrant,” which is how the government historically operates, the Post’s attorneys wrote.
Instead, the newspaper argued, “The government seized this proverbial haystack in an attempt to locate a needle.”