"In many ways, the search - which ended in agents confiscating a phone, two computers and a Garmin watch from Post reporter Hannah Natanson - was an unusually brazen threat to press freedom, even for an administration that has repeatedly attacked the press. But in other ways, the search (and the subsequent subpoena the Post received) was an escalation of an already troubling trend that stretches back several presidential administrations, according to press freedom experts."
""The United States has been backsliding to this point - at both the federal and local levels - for quite some time," wrote Freedom of the Press Foundation director of advocacy Seth Stern and Defending Rights and Dissent policy director Chip Gibbons in an op-ed for The Guardian. The last time federal law enforcement searched a journalist's home was in May 2023, Stern told Poynter. That was when FBI agents raided independent journalist Tim Burke's home, seizing multiple computers, cellphones, hard drives and notebooks."
FBI agents searched Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson's home and seized a phone, two computers and a Garmin watch. Many journalists expressed shock and described the search as extreme. The search represented an unusually brazen threat to press freedom while also reflecting an escalation of a longer pattern of government actions against journalists across several presidential administrations. Officials reportedly told Natanson that neither she nor the Post was the focus, saying investigators were pursuing government contractor Aurelio Perez-Lugones for allegedly leaking classified information. Earlier raids included a May 2023 FBI raid on journalist Tim Burke and an August raid on the Marion County Record.
Read at Poynter
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