WASHINGTON: Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation searched a Washington Post reporter’s home on Wednesday as part of an investigation into sharing secret government information, in a move that advocates said threatened press freedom.

The reporter, Hannah Natanson, has covered President Donald Trump’s campaign to fire hundreds of thousands of federal workers and shift remaining workers to implementing his agenda.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said federal agents had executed the search at the request of the Defence Department. The Justice Department last year reversed a policy that had barred prosecutors from seizing records from reporters in most circumstances.

Natanson wrote a story last month about her personal experience covering the effort titled “I am The Post’s ‘federal government whisperer’. It’s been brutal.” In it, Natanson related the relentless pace of calls and messages she received from former and current federal employees frustrated by the changes.

The newspaper reported that Natanson was present for the search of her Virginia home. It reported that the search was linked to the case against Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a technology specialist for a US government contractor who was charged last week with unlawful retention of national defence information.

Prosecutors alleged that Perez-Lugones took screenshots of classified intelligence reports and printed those documents, according to a criminal complaint.

Investigators also found documents marked “secret” in a lunchbox in Perez-Lugones’s car and in his basement, according to an FBI affidavit. “The Trump administration will not tolerate illegal leaks of classified information that, when reported, pose a grave risk to our Nations national security,” Bondi said on X.

Advocates of press freedom said the search was a dramatic escalation in the administration’s ongoing attacks on news media.

“Searches of newsrooms and journalists are hallmarks of illiberal regimes, and we must ensure that these practices are not normalised here,” said Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute.

Published in Dawn, January 15th, 2026