Federal agents raided the home of a Washington Post journalist early Jan. 14 as part of an investigation into a government contractor accused of illegally retaining classified materials, the newspaper reported.
The FBI executed the search at journalist Hannah Natanson’s residence in Alexandria, Virginia, where they seized multiple electronic devices, including her work laptop, personal laptop, cell phone, and Garmin watch, according to the Post. Natanson has not been accused of any wrongdoing and was not the probe’s target.
Natanson, who has been covering federal workforce policy under the Trump administration, recently published a first-person piece describing how she cultivated several sources within the federal workforce — leading one colleague to describe her as “the federal government whisperer.”
The Post described the FBI’s search as “exceptionally rare,” noting that federal press-protection laws “are designed to make it difficult to use aggressive law enforcement tactics against reporters to obtain the identities of their sources or information.”
The federal investigation centers on Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a Maryland-based system administrator with top-secret security clearance who worked as a Pentagon contractor, according to an FBI affidavit cited by the newspaper. Authorities allege Perez-Lugones accessed and removed classified intelligence reports without authorization. Investigators later found some of the materials in his lunchbox and basement.
Perez-Lugones is currently in custody and faces charges for illegally retaining government materials, Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a Jan. 14 statement on X.
“This past week, at the request of the Department of War, the Department of Justice and FBI executed a search warrant at the home of a Washington Post journalist who was obtaining and reporting classified and illegally leaked information from a Pentagon contractor,” Bondi wrote. “The leaker is currently behind bars.”
She added that the Trump administration “will not tolerate illegal leaks of classified information that, when reported, pose a grave risk to our Nation’s national security and the brave men and women who are serving our country.”
Despite Bondi’s characterization, the criminal complaint against Perez-Lugones does not explicitly allege that he leaked the classified materials he is accused of unlawfully retaining, according to the Post.
According to the New York Post, which cited the affidavit, Perez-Lugones accessed databases “maintained by several Government agencies” to “view a classified intelligence report related to a foreign country.”
The affidavit reportedly states that Perez-Lugones took screenshots of the report, pasted them into a Microsoft Word document, and printed the material on Oct. 28, 2025, even though he “had no need to know and was not authorized to search for” its contents, the New York Post reported. Between Jan. 5 and 7, he allegedly viewed additional classified materials and took handwritten notes on a yellow legal pad, at least four pages of which he brought home.
Federal agents executed a search warrant on Perez-Lugones’ home in Laurel, Maryland, on Jan. 8 and recovered “multiple documents that were marked SECRET,” according to the affidavit.
FBI Special Agent Keith Starr, who authored the filing, said at least one of the documents discovered was related to national defense. Perez-Lugones faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of unlawful retention of national defense information.
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