The FBI Raid on a WashPo Reporter’s Home and the Legal Loophole Used by Presidents of Both Parties

PHOTO CREDIT: Tim Pierce

On January 14, FBI agents raided the home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson and seized her phone, two laptops, and a Garmin watch.

This story has brought the Privacy Protection Act (PPA) of 1980 back into focus. In theory, that law protects journalists from having their notes or “work product” seized unless they themselves are criminal suspects. And while the affidavit has yet to be unsealed, Natanson and The Post were told that they are not targets of the government’s probe. Yet clearly, she is being targeted as if she were a criminal. First Amendment watchdogs are understandably barking mad.

As Chris Cillizza recounts in his concise summation of recent history on the law and past raids on reporters, the PPA has inspired creative ways by administrations of both parties to circumvent it. The government doesn’t like it when a reporter knows more about a crime than the Department of Justice does. In such cases, what’s an administration to do? In the case of Fox News reporter James Rosen, Obama’s Justice Department in 2013 declared Rosen a co-conspirator with an actual criminal in order to confiscate that reporter’s notes. Then-Attorney General Eric Holder later admitted he never suspected Rosen of an actual crime.

To quote Cillizza, after the Obama Administration “stretched the rubber band” on First Amendment press protections, it “never went back.” The First Trump Administration stretched the rubber band some more. So did the Biden Administration. And now the second Trump Administration appears to be giving the method for getting around the law even more elasticity. Gabe Rottman of Reporters Committee has meticulously chronicled the long struggle between free press advocates and these successive administrations.

It is not a tale that inspires hope. Consider how the Department of Justice embraced an internal policy of protecting reporters, only to violate its own policy, then rescind it altogether.

As dysfunctional as the media may sometimes be, it still performs a vital role in national hygiene – bringing to light corruption and malfeasance in government. Time after time, we’ve seen administrations act under the banner of “national security,” when they are in fact seeking primarily to avoid political embarrassment.

This worsening trend in press freedom in recent years suggests that the Privacy Protection Act is an insufficient guarantor of journalistic rights. As aggressive and overreaching as Attorney General Bondi’s move against Natanson was, it is the logical continuation of the policies of the last four presidential administrations.
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Only by passing the Protect Reporters from Exploitive State Spying (PRESS) Act – a genuine press shield law – will the feds respect the role of journalists in a First Amendment society.

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