Replies to post #532900 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[Zorax]

Clearly, this administrations DOJ is not a justice department, it is now the department of injustice. Full stop.

Rhetorical question written out loud...

We only see the names and actions of the top 10 or 15 gop nazi's every day and know why they're on the tax dole, but what about the 10's of other rank and file gop nazi's who we hardly know even exist? What's their excuse or reason why they are literally invisible and sit part time in their towers barely going out into public, actually ordered not to do town meetings? Almost all of them are not on committees and only show up in public to cut ribbons and take credit for something beneficial to the little people they probably voted against or didn't even vote. While they sit and hide living large and having paid lunches and dinners maybe from small time lobbyists, if at all.

BTW- there is a small group of millionaires who run lobbyist farms, like a law firm employing 50 or more lawyers. These companies full job is to bribe congresspeople for their clients. These farms need to be shut down and lobbying needs to be stopped altogether. A very tall order given the very people getting rich from the lobbyists and the lobbyists themselves almost exclusively retired politicians are the people to vote the change.

[fuagf]

FBI executes search warrant at Washington Post reporter’s home

"How the Justice Department is remaking itself in Trump’s image
[...]Salvador Rizzo, Douglas MacMillan, Hannah Natanson and Natalie Allison contributed to this report."

The search came as part of an investigation into a government contractor accused of illegally retaining classified government materials.

Updated
January 14, 2026 at 7:35 p.m. ESTyesterday at 7:35 p.m. EST

By Perry Stein and Jeremy Roebuck

The FBI executed a search warrant Wednesday morning at a Washington Post reporter’s home as part of an investigation into a government contractor accused of illegally retaining classified government materials.

The reporter, Hannah Natanson, was at her home in Virginia at the time of the search. Federal agents searched her home and her devices, seizing her phone, two laptops and a Garmin watch. One of the laptops was her personal computer, the other a Post-issued laptop.

The Post also received a subpoena Wednesday morning seeking information related to the same government contractor, according to a person familiar with the law enforcement action. The subpoena asked The Post to hand over any communications between the contractor and other employees.

It is exceptionally rare for law enforcement officials to conduct searches at reporters’ homes. Federal regulations intended to protect a free press are designed to make it difficult to use aggressive law enforcement tactics against reporters to obtain the identities of their sources or information.

In an email to The Post’s newsroom, Executive Editor Matt Murray called the search an “extraordinary, aggressive action” that is “deeply concerning and raises profound questions and concern around the constitutional protections for our work.”

Investigators told Natanson that she is not the focus of the probe. The warrant said that law enforcement was investigating Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a system administrator in Maryland who has a top-secret security clearance and has been accused of accessing and taking home classified intelligence reports from secure government facilities that were later found in his lunch box and his basement, according to an FBI affidavit.

A Justice Department official said that Perez-Lugones searched for classified information without authorization on his work systems, including classified intelligence about a nation identified in the court documents as “country 1.”

At the time of his arrest last Thursday, Perez-Lugones was messaging the reporter, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an active investigation. Investigators determined that there was classified information in their chat, the official said.

In a social media post Wednesday morning, Attorney General Pam Bondi said: “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.”

“The Trump Administration will not tolerate illegal leaks of classified information that, when reported, pose a grave risk to our Nation’s national security and the brave men and women who are serving our country,” Bondi wrote.

[Insert: Makes you sick when you think it's ok by Bondi and Trump that Trump take boxes of classified docs home yet it's
so wrong for others to warrant a raid on a reporter's home. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein must be shaking their heads.]

Natanson has not been accused of any wrongdoing, and the criminal complaint filed against Perez-Lugones does not accuse him of leaking classified information he is alleged to have taken.

Federal authorities in Maryland charged Perez-Lugones, a Navy veteran, on Friday with unlawfully retaining national defense information. He had his initial court appearance that same day and remains in federal custody in Maryland. He is scheduled to appear in court again Thursday.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday appeared to refer to Perez-Lugones in remarks before a bill signing at the White House. “The leaker has been found and is in jail right now. And that’s the leaker on Venezuela and a very bad leaker,” he said.

The U.S. has no law that explicitly makes it a crime for a journalist to obtain or publish classified information. In 2019, when WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was indicted under the Espionage Act for disclosing classified information, First Amendment scholars warned that his case could set a precedent that could be used against journalists. That issue was never tested in court because Assange and the government reached a plea deal in 2024.

In his email to the newspaper’s staff, Murray wrote:

“The Washington Post has a long history of zealous support for robust press freedoms. The entire institution stands by those freedoms and our work. We have been in close touch with Hannah, with authorities and with legal counsel and will keep you updated as we learn more. In the meantime, the best thing all of us can do is to continue to vigorously exercise those freedoms as we do every day.”

Natanson covers the federal workforce and has been a part of The Post’s most high-profile and sensitive coverage related to government firings, national security and diplomacy during the first year of the second Trump administration. Her most recent articles included in-depth reporting on topics as disparate as Venezuela and Social Security.

In December, Natanson wrote a first-person account .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/12/24/trump-federal-government-workers/ .. about her experience covering the workforce as Trump’s administration created upheaval across the federal government. She detailed how she posted her secure phone number to an online forum for government workers and amassed more than 1,000 sources, with federal workers frequently reaching out to her to share frustrations and accounts from their offices.

“Hannah is one of our finest reporters, who works tirelessly to inform our readers about what is actually happening in government,” Will Lewis, the publisher of The Post and CEO of the Post company, said in a statement.

“Unsurprisingly, her spirit is not dimmed by the outrageous action that was taken against her at 6am this morning at her home. Even with her laptops and phone taken, what did she most want to do today? Get back to work and file some new hard-hitting stories - thus exemplifying the indomitable spirit of The Washington Post. After all, this is what we do.”

While it is not unusual for FBI agents to conduct leak investigations into public reporting of classified information, it is highly unusual and aggressive for law enforcement to conduct a search on a reporter’s home.

Bruce D. Brown, president of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, called the search of Natanson’s home “a tremendous escalation in the administration’s intrusions into the independence of the press.”

The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment, though the bureau’s director, Kash Patel, wrote on social media that the alleged leaked information endangered the military.

“This morning the FBI and partners executed a search warrant of an individual at the Washington Post who was found to allegedly be obtaining and reporting classified, sensitive military information from a government contractor - endangering our warfighters and compromising America’s national security,” Patel wrote.

In April, Bondi rescinded a Biden-era policy that prevented officials from searching reporters’ phone records when trying to identify government personnel who have provided sensitive information to news organizations.

Bondi said in an internal memo at the time that the media should not be afforded such protections, noting leaks of government information during the Trump administration.

“This conduct is illegal and wrong and it must stop,” she wrote in the memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Post.

But Bondi said that the Justice Department would search reporters’ communication records only when other investigative methods had been exhausted. The search warrant and seizures appeared to be Natanson’s first interaction with investigators.

Historically, the Justice Department does not investigate or prosecute reporters who share information that is given to them by confidential sources.

Under Bondi’s predecessor, Attorney General Merrick Garland, internal regulations prohibited law enforcement officials from issuing subpoenas to reporters or conducting searches to obtain the identities of their sources or information for criminal investigations, including investigations against government employees accused of leaking to the media.

If law enforcement did take investigatory steps against reporters, top Justice Department officials needed to sign off on those steps and publicly report the actions.

First Amendment advocacy organizations condemned the FBI’s search of a reporter’s home, saying it undermines a free press.

“Any search targeting a journalist warrants intense scrutiny because these kinds of searches can deter and impede reporting that is vital to our democracy,” said Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute.

“Attorney General Bondi has weakened guidelines that were intended to protect the freedom of the press, but there are still important legal limits, including constitutional ones, on the government’s authority to use subpoenas, court orders, and search warrants to obtain information from journalists.”

Juan Benn Jr. contributed to this report

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/01/14/washington-post-reporter-search/