Journalists say unprecedented FBI raid on reporter’s home will have ‘widespread ramifications’

More than three months after the FBI took the unprecedented step of raiding a Washington Post reporter’s home in connection with a national security leak investigation, journalists say the search has had serious consequences — for reporters and their sources, and for the public that relies on them to hold the government accountable. 

The Jan. 14 raid on the home of reporter Hannah Natanson sent a shockwave through the journalism industry. In its immediate aftermath, journalists expressed alarm that federal agents not only searched Natanson’s home but also seized the reporter’s phone, laptops, and other electronic devices, capturing years of her newsgathering materials and communications with confidential sources. Journalists have since had several months to assess the raid’s fallout.

Ahead of World Press Freedom Day, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press spoke to more than a dozen reporters and editors at a range of news outlets, many on the condition of anonymity, to find out how the raid has impacted their reporting and what it could ultimately mean for their ability to tell important stories in the public interest. 

The journalists we interviewed almost universally expressed shock, but not necessarily surprise, about the search, with some emphasizing that it was an inevitable next step in what they see as the Trump administration’s broader anti-press agenda.

Most of them worried that the search of Natanson’s home will prevent confidential sources from coming forward with information the public needs to know out of fear that the government will use their communications with journalists to hunt them down. Some told us that’s already happening. 

“I’ve had people I spoke to for years who said, ‘I just can’t talk to you anymore,’ because they don’t want to risk their security clearance and their livelihood,” said a reporter based in Washington. 

According to many of the journalists we interviewed, the search of Natanson’s home has prompted reporters and their newsrooms to buttress their security practices to ensure newsgathering materials and communications with confidential sources are as protected as possible. But even if sources are willing to share sensitive information, some journalists expressed concern that the raid could make reporters think twice about publishing it.

The collective chilling effect — both on sources and reporters — spells grave danger for a free press in the United States, journalists told us. The impact of the raid, some said, will have “widespread ramifications” across the country, affecting not just national security reporters covering, for instance, the war in Iran but also local reporters covering small-town police departments. 

“If there are fewer sources in government who see waste, fraud, and abuse, and betrayals of the public trust, and they are not willing to tell someone who can shine light on it, we have a more illiberal democracy,” said an investigative reporter and editor who covers the federal government. “The First Amendment to our Constitution has been damaged.”

‘An inevitable outcome’

Reporters said the raid was alarming, but in some ways, it was hardly unthinkable. Even before President Donald Trump returned to office last year, there were signs that his second administration would ratchet up attacks on the press, which Trump has called “the enemy of the American people.” 

“It seemed like an inevitable outcome given the broader climate and attitude that both the Trump administration and Trump himself and Trumpworld cultivated in their attitude toward the press,” said an investigative reporter based in Washington.

Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice rolled back Biden-era guidelines that largely barred prosecutors from using subpoenas or other investigative tools against journalists. The Pentagon imposed a new press policy that empowered officials to punish reporters for gathering information that the administration hadn’t pre-approved for release. The Trump administration kicked The Associated Press out of the White House press pool. The Federal Communications Commission launched investigations into news outlets. And Trump himself has repeatedly sued or otherwise lashed out against news organizations in retaliation for coverage he perceives as unfavorable. 

Still, “the physical search of a house is something new,” a reporter who covers national security noted. 

That the government took such an invasive step indicates the move was designed to send a message, said Glenn Kessler, who spent nearly three decades as a reporter and editor at The Post. In 2004, Kessler was ensnared in secret FBI surveillance of his confidential source, which federal prosecutors later used to support an indictment of two lobbyists accused of passing Kessler and others classified information. (The government eventually dropped the charges.)

Kessler said that, back then, he declined prosecutors’ request to interview him and “they immediately backed off.” But now, Kessler said, the government “went from zero to 60 in five seconds” in searching Natanson’s home without warning and seizing her devices. “I mean, they could have done that to me back then, but there were guardrails.”

A federal law called the Privacy Protection Act of 1980 prohibits government raids targeting journalists or newsrooms, with few exceptions. The search warrant affidavit justifying the FBI’s request to search Natanson’s home, which the Reporters Committee sought to unseal after the raid, revealed that the government failed to mention the PPA in its warrant application. The government also did not flag for the judge that Natanson wasn’t a target of the investigation.

The judge who granted the warrant later said he wasn’t previously aware of the law and chided the government for its omission. 

According to the affidavit, the government alleged that The Post published at least five news articles with classified information that it says Natanson obtained from Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a government contractor who has been charged with illegally transmitting and retaining national defense materials. 

The government asked the court to authorize the seizure of Natanson’s electronic devices because it claimed they probably contain classified information that “is evidence of Perez-Lugones’s crimes and which, if disclosed, could harm national security.” 

A federal magistrate judge has blocked the Justice Department from reviewing the electronic devices seized in the raid, concluding that the court would conduct its own review of the material. The government appealed that decision in early April. 

“I’ve thought for years that the fate of the republic lies in the hands of the judiciary in the United States, and that’s particularly true in this case,” said Cameron Barr, former senior managing editor at The Post. “It’s now up to the courts to safeguard the protections that the founders of the American republic sought to create for the ability of the press to do its job.”

Park benches and Post-its

Journalists have always had to think carefully about protecting their confidential sources, said Barr, who was national security editor at The Post for three years during the Obama administration, which prosecuted a record number of leak cases. 

In December, Natanson described some of the ways she secured her sensitive reporting materials in a first-person account of her experience covering the federal workforce: She communicated with sources on the encrypted messaging app Signal; she carried her phone and her computer everywhere, even inside her home; and she stored her notes on an encrypted drive, to name a few examples.

Many reporters who spoke to the Reporters Committee said as a result of the search, they’ve become more cautious. Some said they disabled biometrics for their devices, meaning they can’t be unlocked using fingerprints or facial recognition. The warrant in Natanson’s case authorized FBI agents to ask Natanson to unlock her devices with biometrics, but it didn’t give them permission to ask her to input a password.    

Seven journalists said they’re increasingly going analog to avoid leaving a digital trail that could be traced back to confidential sources. That could mean meeting sources in public, like on a park bench, or taking notes with a pen and paper. 

“As often as possible, meet people in person,” said an investigative reporter based in Los Angeles. If you can’t, the reporter added, use encrypted apps like Signal — and change your settings so your messages automatically disappear. 

Five reporters said their outlets held newsroom meetings in response to the raid, some with lawyers. A longtime national security reporter said after the Natanson search, “everybody I know made sure they had the phone number to call their lawyer, and it wasn’t just in their phone.” The reporter wrote the newsroom lawyer’s phone number on a Post-it Note and stuck it within close reach. 

“One has to be able to figure out a system for getting help if they seize your equipment, which was unthinkable, in my opinion, the day before” the raid, the reporter said.

Other journalists told us the search was an impetus for informal conversations about digital security and best practices, particularly with reporters who don’t cover national security, a beat that more frequently deals with sensitive or classified information.

A few reporters who cover national security issues said they didn’t notice a difference in their interactions with sources after the raid because they’d been assuring sources that they would protect them well before it happened. Several journalists said their sources weren’t intimidated, but indignant. 

“My sources were already at a point where they were out of f—s to give,” said a reporter who covers the federal government. “They were just kind of like, ‘I’ve been taking this risk anyway, and I have come to terms with that.’”

Six reporters said after the search, sources seemed more skittish. A national security editor we spoke with said one of his reporters spent a long time speaking with a source before the FBI raid. After it happened, however, the source went dark. 

Many reporters attributed such skittishness to the broader climate of hostility toward journalists. They noted that the raid was just one of a host of attacks on the flow of information by the Trump administration, which, taken together, have had a chilling effect on sources’ willingness to speak with journalists. 

The Trump administration has tried to tamp down unauthorized disclosures of all kinds, including of unclassified information about the inner workings of the government. Reporters told us government workers are afraid to have routine, casual conversations with journalists because they’re scared of the consequences, which could range from losing their security clearance to getting fired to facing federal prosecution. 

“They’re not intimidated by the press,” said a reporter who covers national security. “They’re intimidated by government.”

What this means for the public

Margaret Sullivan, former public editor for The New York Times, said when government sources are afraid to talk to the press, it’s the public that loses out. If journalists weren’t able to protect the confidentiality of their sources, some of the most consequential reporting in U.S. history, like the Watergate scandal, may never have been brought to light. 

“Source protection is at the heart of investigative and a lot of other reporting,” said Sullivan, now a columnist for The Guardian US. “We have to be able to tell sources, ‘You’re safe with me.’”

People tend to turn to the press when they’ve exhausted all other avenues to raise concerns about what’s going on in the government, several journalists said. These anonymous whistleblowers are a source of independent information that allows the public to learn about how officials are conducting public business.  

“No one’s jumping and eager to risk their job and their livelihood and come to the press and expose things they perceive to be wrong,” said a reporter who covers the federal government. “They do it because they feel like they don’t have another option, and they feel like the risk is worth it because the public needs to know.”

In April, for example, more than two dozen confidential sources told The Atlantic that FBI Director Kash Patel is “known to drink to the point of obvious intoxication” and some worry the behavior could threaten public safety. According to The Atlantic, some of these sources “have been afraid to reveal their concerns about Patel publicly or through traditional whistleblower channels, because he has been aggressive in cracking down on anyone he deems insufficiently loyal.” (Patel, who denies the allegations, filed a defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic on April 20.) 

Several journalists said the raid’s ramifications are likely to cascade far beyond Washington, emboldening local officials to wield government powers against small news outlets that don’t have the same resources to fight back as a newspaper like The Post. The mere possibility could deter these outlets from publishing ambitious reporting altogether, which means local communities could lose access to information that shapes their daily lives, like coverage of public safety or neighborhood schools. 

It’s a threat that cuts to the core of America’s democratic system, said Barr, the former Post editor. 

“We do this job because we believe in the public’s right to know,” said Barr, now investigations editor at Mill Media. “We believe in the value of accountability and the scrutiny of official conduct. This is why the founders provided for that in the First Amendment, and that needs to be defended now.”