RCFP seeks to unseal court records related to FBI search of Washington Post reporter’s home

Hours after the FBI searched a Washington Post reporter’s home and seized her electronic devices on Wednesday, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press asked a federal district court in Virginia to unseal records related to the search warrant. 

The Reporters Committee’s filing in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia calls the FBI’s execution of the search warrant “exceptional” and argues that “denying the public access to every word of every page of the government’s justification for raiding a reporter’s home cannot be justified.”

According to the Post, FBI agents searched reporter Hannah Natanson’s home Wednesday morning as part of an investigation into a government contractor charged with illegally retaining classified materials. After searching her home, agents seized Natanson’s personal laptop, a work laptop, a Garmin watch, and her phone. The Post reported that the newspaper was also served with a subpoena seeking information related to the same government contractor. 

Given how rare and extreme it is for the government to search and seize a reporter’s property, the FBI’s raid on Wednesday drew widespread public interest. In a statement, Reporters Committee President Bruce D. Brown highlighted the danger that such searches can pose to confidential sources beyond just one investigation and to public interest reporting broadly, calling the search “a tremendous escalation in the administration’s intrusions into the independence of the press.”

Currently all of the judicial records related to the search warrant are filed under seal, including the affidavit purporting to justify the government’s actions. In the filing Wednesday evening, a team of Reporters Committee attorneys asked the court to issue an order to make those records publicly available. 

The application argues that the common law guarantees a presumption of access to the warrant materials — and that the government cannot overcome that presumption of access based on the facts of the case, in part because of the amount of information about the raid that has already been made public, including in a social media post by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The Reporters Committee’s filing also argues that the public has a powerful interest in understanding an investigative step with dramatic consequences for a free press and the constitutional rights of journalists.