by Stefano Vaccara
NEW YORK (ITALPRESS) – The FBI dawned Hannah Natanson’s Virginia house, a Washington Post journalist, in a move defined by the daily “highly unusual and aggressive” and considered by many observers a qualitative leap in the pressure of the Trump administration on the media. Agents have seized electronic devices, including the phone and even a Garmin watch, as part of an investigation related to a case of classified materials involving a government contractor. According to Washington Post and New York Times, the search warrant concerns Aurelio Perez-Lugones, system administrator in Maryland with “top secret” authorization, accused of having access to intelligence reports and having brought them home, where they would also be found in a lunchbox and a basement. The Justice Department has not released immediate comments.
Natanson, who follows the world of federal work, was among the most exposed signatures in recounting the first year of Trump’s second term, marked by dismissals and rewriting of the missions of federal agencies. In a recent first-person text, the reporter described a network of over a thousand sources, mostly public employees, who contacted her day and night to report decisions, pressures and internal changes. This element makes the episode potentially explosive: the search for a journalist’s home, with seizure of devices, does not affect only one person or an inquiry. It is a message to the entire ecosystem of sources. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has denounced that it is one of the most invasive investigative tools possible, able to put at risk the confidentiality and security of sources far beyond the single case. Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute in Columbia, spoke of a “intensively worrying” fact about the deterrent effect on normal journalistic activity.
The political context is equally relevant. In 2025, the Trump administration canceled a policy of the Biden era that drastically limited the possibility for the Justice Department to search for or obtain reporter data in the “fuge” investigations of news. General Prosecutor Pam Bondi motivated the turning point with the need to protect sensitive information and pursue unauthorized disclosures. In the United States the press is protected by the First Amendment and the protection of sources is not a corporate privilege, but a condition to bring out abuse, waste and violations of law. When the response of the state passes from the search for evidence to direct pressure on journalists, the red line of the First Amendment is crossed. For this reason, as former Director of Post Marty Baron said, the raid appears as a “clear and disturbing sign” of an administration ready to test the limits in the confrontation with the independent press. Waiting for the details of the affidavit and the legal motivation, remains the political fact: it is “awesome”, even in the investigations about classified information, get to the seizure of the devices of a reporter with a search at home. And when it happens, it is no longer just an intelligence dossier, but the heart of the relationship between power and the right to inform.
– photo IPA Agency –
(ITALPRESS).
