Investigating Reporters

“It is exceedingly rare, even in investigations of classified disclosures, for federal agents to search a reporter’s home. A 1980 law called the Privacy Protection Act generally bars search warrants for reporters’ work materials, unless the reporters themselves are suspected of committing a crime related to the materials.” NYT (Gift Article): F.B.I. Searches Home of Washington Post Journalist in a Leak Investigation. (If they find classified docs in her bathroom, she gets to be president.)

+ WaPo (Gift Article): FBI executes search warrant at Washington Post reporter’s home. “Investigators told Natanson that she is not the focus of the probe. The warrant said that law enforcement was investigating Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a system administrator in Maryland who has a top-secret security clearance and has been accused of accessing and taking home classified intelligence reports that were found in his lunchbox and his basement … In December, [Hannah] Natanson wrote a first-person account about her experience covering the workforce as President Donald Trump’s administration created upheaval across the federal government. She detailed how she posted her secure phone number to an online forum for government workers and amassed more than 1,000 sources, with federal workers frequently reaching out to her to share frustrations and accounts from their offices.”

+ I thought the administration was proud of the damage it’s done to offices across the federal government. Why wouldn’t they want the story out there? “Donald Trump’s destruction of the civil service is a tragedy not just for the roughly 300,000 workers who have been discarded, but for an entire nation.” Franklin Foer in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Purged.