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Who is Hannah Natanson and why did FBI execute search warrant at Washington Post reporter’s home?
The FBI executed a search warrant at the Virginia home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson on Wednesday.
The FBI executed a search warrant at the Virginia home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson on Wednesday, in what the newspaper described as a “highly unusual and aggressive” move. The Post said Natanson was informed by agents that she is not accused of any wrongdoing and that neither she nor the newspaper had been told they were targets of a Justice Department investigation.
According to The Guardian, FBI agents arrived unannounced at Natanson’s home early Wednesday, searched the residence and seized several electronic devices, including her phone, a Garmin watch and two laptops - one of which belonged to her employer.
In an internal email to staff, Washington Post executive editor Matt Murray said the newsroom received no prior notice of the search.
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Who is Hannah Natanson?
Hannah Natanson is a Washington, DC-based reporter for the Washington Post who covers President Donald Trump’s reshaping of the federal government and its effects, according to her author profile on the newspaper’s website. Before that, she reported on education for six years.
Natanson has received several major journalism honors. She was part of a Washington Post team awarded the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol and was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting in 2020.
In 2024, she won a George Foster Peabody Award for a podcast series on school gun violence and was a finalist for the Poynter Journalism Prizes’ First Amendment Award.
Her additional recognitions include the Society of Professional Journalists’ Dateline Award for Investigative Journalism and a National First-Place Award for News Reporting from the Education Writers Association in 2020.
Natanson holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University.
Why the search warrant was executed
The search was connected to a federal investigation into a Pentagon contractor accused of improperly retaining classified materials.
A warrant reviewed by the Washington Post cited an inquiry into Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a Maryland-based system administrator with top-secret security clearance who allegedly accessed and kept classified intelligence reports. The criminal complaint against Perez-Lugones does not accuse him of leaking classified information to journalists, the newspaper reported.
US Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a January 14 post on X that the Department of Justice and the FBI executed the search at the request of the Department of Defense. She alleged that a Washington Post journalist had been obtaining and reporting “classified and illegally leaked information,” and said the alleged leaker is currently in custody.
FBI Director Kash Patel echoed that assertion in a separate post on X, describing the matter as an ongoing national security investigation and declining to provide further details.
