By Sadie Gurman and Alexandra Bruell

FBI agents searched the home of a Washington Post reporter Wednesday morning as part of an investigation into mishandling of classified information by a government contractor.

Such an action is exceedingly rare and underscores the Trump administration's aggressive approach to identifying and prosecuting those who leak government secrets.

Agents executed a search warrant at the Virginia home of Hannah Natanson as part of an investigation into Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a government contractor in Maryland with a top-secret security clearance who was charged Friday with unlawful retention of national defense information, a law-enforcement official familiar with the probe said.

"The Trump Administration will not tolerate illegal leaks of classified information that, when reported, pose a grave risk to our Nation's national security," Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a social-media post Wednesday.

Perez-Lugones, a systems engineer, was accused of accessing and taking home classified reports that investigators found in his lunchbox and his basement, an FBI agent wrote in an affidavit supporting the charges. A public defender representing him didn't immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

Natanson has spent the past year writing about the Trump administration's transformation of the federal workforce. In December, she published a story detailing the wave of outreach she got from more than 1,100 new sources regarding mass layoffs and changes for government employees. She has also written about the U.S.'s recent military action in Venezuela.

The Post is reviewing and monitoring the situation, a spokeswoman said.

Natanson and the FBI didn't immediately return calls seeking comment.

Bondi said Wednesday that the reporter was "obtaining and reporting classified and illegally leaked information from a Pentagon contractor," and that "the leaker is currently behind bars." The search, she said, was done at the Defense Department's request.

"Physical searches of reporters' devices, homes and belongings are some of the most invasive investigative steps law enforcement can take," said Bruce D. Brown, president of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. He described Wednesday's search at Natanson's house as a "tremendous escalation in the administration's intrusions into the independence of the press."

The Trump administration has vowed to go after government employees who share sensitive information with the press. Early in Trump's second term, Bondi authorized prosecutors to issue subpoenas to news organizations, serve search warrants and force reporters to testify about their sources. That is a stark change from Biden administration rules that protected journalists from having their phone records searched during criminal investigations, a practice press advocacy groups had long denounced.

Write to Sadie Gurman at sadie.gurman@wsj.com and Alexandra Bruell at alexandra.bruell@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 14, 2026 11:06 ET (16:06 GMT)

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