A federal judge rejected the Justice Department’s demand to continue searching the phone of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson in a Thursday ruling.
However, the judge didn’t completely rule against the Justice Department over the issue.
U.S. Magistrate Judge William Porter of the federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, issued a ruling granting, in part, Natanson’s and the Washington Post’s motion for return of property after the FBI’s search of her home and devices. He argued that the government’s actions violated her First Amendment rights as a member of the press.
The judge criticized the Justice Department for failing to flag and analyze the Privacy Protection Act of 1980 before seeking a warrant against the journalist. He argued that this failure “has seriously undermined the Court’s confidence in the government’s disclosures in this proceeding.”
However, Judge Porter did recognize the government’s "compelling interest in prosecuting the unlawful disclosure of classified national security information” related to alleged leaks from Aurelio Luis Perez-Lugones, a former federal contractor who was charged for violations of the Espionage Act. He allegedly retained and transmitted national defense information.
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The judge acknowledged that the DOJ had probable cause to believe Natanson received top secret information through Signal from Perez-Lugones and that some messages were set to delete automatically. But he insisted that allowing the government to search through “the entirety of a reporter’s work product” would effectively constitute “an unlawful general warrant,” and would be like “leaving the government’s fox in charge of the Washington Post’s henhouse.”
Huge win for Hannah Natanson and the Washington Post today: the judge ruled that the government cannot search the devices they seized from her. https://t.co/XwYngNlWYz pic.twitter.com/mKYpFJehDm
— Runa Sandvik (@runasand) February 24, 2026
It appears the judge is trying to split the baby, deciding that the government must return Natanson’s devices. But the court will review the information pertaining to Perez-Lugones’ case and determine whether the Justice Department can keep the data. He concluded by saying he hopes the search was truly about the leak case and “not to collect information about confidential sources from a reporter who has published articles critical of the administration.”
FBI agents searched Natanson’s home in Virginia and seized her phone as part of the national security leak case. The investigation centers on allegations that the contractor took home classified reports related to a foreign nation. They treated the content of Natanson’s phone and other devices as possible evidence of how the materials might have been shared, NBC News reported. The reporter was not the target of the investigation.
The Justice Department argued that it needed to search Natanson’s phone and other devices to find communications with Perez-Lugones. However, press freedom advocates and the Washington Post argued that this would expose a significant amount of unrelated reporting material.
The Washington Post issued a statement saying, “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.”
