Fox News defends FBI seizure of Washington Post reporter’s property

Last month, as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth blocked the release of video that captured fatal U.S. strikes off the Venezuelan coast, the Washington Post editorial board dedicated an op-ed to praising another Trump Cabinet member, Attorney General Pam Bondi, for limiting her office’s consideration of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. “Bondi has chipped away at the doctrine with revised regulatory guidance this week, and other departments can follow her lead,” the paper wrote in its editorial, calling it “Pam Bondi’s welcome woke rollback.” This week, as President Donald Trump suggested the Civil Rights Act may have been a mistake, Bondi unapologetically executed a search warrant on Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s home. 

“This past week, at the request of the Department of War, the Department of Justice and FBI executed a search warrant at the home of a Washington Post journalist who was obtaining and reporting classified and illegally leaked information from a Pentagon contractor,” Bondi wrote on X. “The leaker is currently behind bars. I am proud to work alongside Secretary Hegseth on this effort.” FBI Director Kash Patel also confirmed the search.  

The Post, citing an FBI affidavit, reported that law enforcement had targeted Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a government contractor in Maryland with a top secret security clearance, for stealing “classified intelligence reports that were found in his lunchbox and his basement.” Perez-Lugones is accused of using databases and repositories to search for, access and view a classified intelligence report related to a foreign country, and is alleged to have taken a screenshot of the report and printed it. 

As the Post’s “federal government whisperer,” Natanson collected dispatches from whistleblowers inside the Trump administration and encouraged people to contact her through Signal, an encrypted messaging app designed to protect the confidentiality that allows journalism to function. (Hegseth himself leaked classified military strike information on Signal and shared these details with unauthorized people, including his wife and brother.) Her recent work included reporting detailing Trump’s military action in Venezuela that resulted in the capture of Nicolás Maduro, as well as “the frantic global race to find an escape route” for the deposed president. Natanson was at her Virginia home at the time of Wednesday’s search, and according to the Post, FBI agents seized her personal laptop and cell phone, along with a Garmin watch and work laptop. She is not accused of leaking anything, nor is she charged with a crime. Natanson did what journalists are supposed to do: cultivate sources, evaluate information and report facts of public interest.

As the New York Times reported, it is “exceedingly rare” for federal agents to search a reporter’s home. Washington Post executive editor Matt Murray sent a memo to staffers on Wednesday stating the paper is “not a target” while acknowledging that “this extraordinary, aggressive action is deeply concerning and raises profound questions and concern around the constitutional protections for our work. The Washington Post has a long history of zealous support for robust press freedoms. The entire institution stands by those freedoms and our work.” 

Bondi, for her part, did not merely defend the raid. She notably went on Fox News to brag about it. “I did a memo rescinding [former Attorney General Merrick] Garland’s memo saying that reporters will not be subpoenaed, that we will not look at reporters’ phones,” she told Fox News host Sean Hannity, without pushback. The attorney general went on to state that the First Amendment is a “bedrock principle” — immediately before explaining why she has chosen to ignore it.

The raid on Natanson’s home is a jarring step aimed at limiting news organizations’ ability to gather information that the government wants concealed — but it’s not new. What makes this moment especially grotesque is the hypocrisy. Fox News, whose personalities and viewers once erupted in fury when the Obama Justice Department secretly obtained phone records belonging to Fox reporter James Rosen and Associated Press journalists, is now providing cover for a far more invasive act. ​​Twelve years ago, the FBI accessed the times of Rosen’s phone calls and two days of his emails as part of an investigation into his reporting on North Korean nuclear test plans. 

The backlash was immediate and bipartisan. Even progressives who disagreed with Fox News on virtually everything rushed to Rosen’s defense, understanding that an attack on one journalist’s freedom is an attack on all of our liberties. Dana Milbank of the Washington Post described the Rosen affair as a flagrant assault on civil liberties. Andrew Napolitano, then a Fox News legal contributor, called the government’s claims — that ordinary reporting skills constituted criminal behavior — unprecedented. The criticism forced Attorney General Eric Holder to apologize and led to new Justice Department policies sharply limiting investigations of journalists, recognizing that targeting reporters to identify sources corrodes the First Amendment itself. 

Those protections were later reaffirmed under President Joe Biden. But Trump rescinded them, and Bondi is now using that reversal exactly as critics warned she would.

As bad as Rosen’s treatment was, this week’s FBI raid is clearly an escalation by the Trump administration. In the Rosen case, investigators gained access to phone records and emails through subpoenas. Natanson endured an early morning raid with federal agents performing a physical search of her home and confiscating her personal devices. This is the stuff of authoritarian regimes, not a functioning democracy that claims to cherish freedom of the press.

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Even after Trump’s rollback of stronger press protections, Justice Department policy still claims that search warrants or subpoenas directed at journalists should be a last resort after all reasonable alternative means are exhausted. Additionally, the information sought by the government must be “essential.” That is why press freedom advocates are sounding alarms. Bruce Brown of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press called physical searches of reporters’ homes and devices “some of the most invasive investigative steps law enforcement can take,” warning that they endanger confidential sources far beyond any single case.

The raid on Hannah Natanson’s home is part of a broader campaign against the media. Trump has long made clear that he wants to prosecute reporters for publishing leaked information. He has called the press “the enemy of the people” so often that the phrase has lost its shock value, which is itself a victory for him. The authoritarian playbook is well established: Prosecute sources who leak embarrassing information. Raid reporters’ homes to identify those sources. Claim that national security justifies secrecy, even when the real motive is political protection. Rely on partisan division to prevent unified opposition. Reward media outlets that provide cover while punishing those that maintain independence. 

Each step normalizes the next, until practices that would once have provoked universal outrage become accepted as routine.

Still, outside of the editorial page, the Washington Post has not relented in its reporting on the Trump administration, particularly concerning Hegseth’s war on the press. This week, the paper reported that the long-running military newspaper Stars and Stripes’ editorial independence could be in question because new job applicants “are being asked how they would support the president’s policy priorities.”

Yet the Post’s ownership adds another layer of tragedy. The newspaper that once symbolized resistance to presidential overreach when it published the Pentagon Papers and uncovered Watergate now appears desperate to prove its respectability to an authoritarian project. The silence from Jeff Bezos, the Post’s publisher, has been deafening. Since the paper declined to endorse a presidential candidate in the 2024 election, a move widely interpreted as an attempt to avoid angering Trump, the editorial page has drifted rightward, as if moderation and deference might buy protection. That illusion now deserves to be shattered. All of Bezos’ wealth and all of Amazon’s lobbying muscle did not prevent federal agents from rifling through his employee’s home. 

America’s elites seem incapable of realizing that authoritarian power does not reward appeasement. It exploits weakness and interprets accommodation as an invitation to demand more. Every concession made in the hope of avoiding conflict becomes merely the baseline from which the next assault is launched. The Washington Post cannot buy its way out of being targeted. Fox News cannot protect itself by providing propaganda cover for attacks on its competitors. Sooner or later, the leopard comes for everyone who imagined they could feed it and remain safe.

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