FBI Spies on, Then Raids Washington Post Reporter’s Home in Escalating Attack on Press Freedom

Interview with Kevin Gosztola, publisher of the Dissenter Newsletter and author of Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange, conducted by Scott Harris

Hannah Natanson

On Jan. 14, FBI agents raided the home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson, seizing her computers, phones, hard drives and other electronic devices in violation of the Privacy Act, threatening press freedom. The search warrant indicated the raid was initiated by a Trump Justice Department Espionage Act investigation into one of Natanson’s alleged news sources, Pentagon contractor Aurelio Perez-Lugones.

FBI Special Agent Matthew Johnson, who applied for the search warrant of Natanson herself, her home and car, revealed that in the days before the raid, FBI agents had conducted “physical surveillance” of Natanson as she entered and exited her home. The government justified its surveillance and raid on a journalist by stating that their goal was to recover classified information as evidence of the Pentagon contractor’s alleged crimes, which if disclosed, “could harm national security.”

The raid was another warning of the Trump regime’s willingness to violate the First Amendment as was seen in the Department of Justice’s Jan. 31 arrest of former CNN anchor Don Lemon and journalist Georgia Fort who had reported on an anti-ICE protest at a Minnesota church. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Kevin Gosztola, publisher of the Dissenter Newsletter, who talks about the FBI raid covered in his recent article, “FBI Spied on Washington Post Reporter Prior To Raiding Their Home.”

KEVIN GOSZTOLA: So extraordinarily—and I think probably the most significant attack on freedom of the press over the last year plus of Donald Trump’s second term—was this FBI raid on Jan. 14 of Hannah Nathanson’s home. And it is so significant because of the fact that rather than seek a subpoena of the reporter as they could have done to get information and argue to a court that this material should be handed over for an Espionage Act prosecution, they simply showed up to her house with a warrant and they took her electronics. They took a laptop that was her personal laptop. They took a work laptop belonging to the Washington Post. They took a Garmin watch, which I can’t figure out what they really need for that, but it’s a “running” watch. And they took a voice recorder as well as her iPhone. And they’re clear in their search warrant application that they really wanted to get to her Signal messages.

And this is where it becomes evident that I think there’s a lot of proof that they were going after her communications with sources. She had written in the Washington Post about how she had amassed over a thousand media sources within the federal government. She was a reporter who had been telling stories about the significant pressures, the different abuses and things that were being witnessed inside of government, was just articulating this broad picture of some of what was going on across agencies. And we know generally speaking, anyone is aware that there’s been a lot of issues from when they first had Elon Musk in charge of the different agencies and firing people. And then also we’ve seen how difficult it is for people who are employees to actually speak their minds without fear of being fired, things of that nature. And so she had been talking to those people and Aurelio Perez-Lugones is the Pentagon contractor who was indicted under the Espionage Act.

And, he allegedly was a source of Hannah Natanson and was someone who provided some documents specifically related to the plotting that was going on within the Trump administration against Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro. At least, that’s the allegation from the FBI and the Justice Department.

SCOTT HARRIS: What is the concern now that the FBI, the Trump administration now has confiscated all her electronic devices? Some of them may be encrypted, but that kind of encryption could be cracked. Could this set a precedent? Could this set a precedent where journalists at any time of the day or night could have their electronic devices, all their personal and private information related to their journalism be confiscated with the intention of revealing and prosecuting sources?

KEVIN GOSZTOLA: Yeah, I think absolutely. And the reason they got the search warrant was not because they wanted to prosecute Hannah Natanson for violating the Espionage Act, but just because they said her electronics have classified information that leaked and they believe that there’s some kind of journalist responsibility to return that information to the Pentagon or any other national security agency that handles classified information, which is not the way that things had been balanced—although I’m not saying there was balance—but it was always accepted that if the material was passed along by a source, the government couldn’t come into the newsroom and take it. And say that you can’t access it and use it for news reporting. So it is rather dramatic here how far they are going to crack down. And Hannah Natanson has made it clear that she’s lost access to all of her sources that she was communicating with on Signal because she lost those devices in which she installed the app.
When she reinstalls the app, she can’t get to her contacts. She can’t get to any of those different threads where she was talking to those sources. So it’s hard for her to rebuild those connections with the people who were providing stories. And at this moment, she has not authored or worked on any stories for the Post since she was targeted.

For more information, visit The Dissenter newsletter at thedissenter.org.

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