Can Journalists Be Prosecuted for Publishing Classified Information?

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On a Wednesday morning in January 2026, FBI agents knocked on the door of a Washington Post reporter’s home in Virginia. They presented a search warrant and seized her phone, two laptops, and a smartwatch. Hannah Natanson wasn’t arrested. She wasn’t charged with a crime. The government says she isn’t even a target of their investigation. But her devices—the tools of her reporting, containing her sources, her notes, her communications—are now in federal custody.

The search warrant related to an investigation into Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a 63-year-old Navy veteran who worked as a systems administrator for a government contractor. He’s accused of taking classified documents marked “SECRET” from a secure government facility for classified information and stashing them in his car’s lunchbox and his basement. The FBI says he was communicating with the reporter while accessing this material. She had recently co-authored an article about Venezuela citing “government documents obtained by the Washington Post.”

What happened next raises a question that legal scholars thought was settled but turns out to rest on surprisingly shaky ground: Can the U.S. government prosecute journalists for publishing classified information?

No journalist has ever been prosecuted under the Espionage Act for publishing classified material. But that fact reflects prosecutors choosing not to bring charges rather than the law preventing it. The law technically applies to anyone—including reporters—who communicates national defense information to people not authorized to receive it. Journalists assume the First Amendment protects them, but courts have never tested this in a case about publishing classified information.

The Policy That Protected Reporters No Longer Exists

After the Obama administration aggressively investigated Fox News reporter James Rosen—even naming him as a potential co-conspirator in a leak case—the Justice Department established strict internal guidelines. Prosecutors had to try other approaches first and demonstrate compelling need before compelling journalists to provide information in leak investigations.

Those protections survived through the Biden administration.

Then in April 2025, Attorney General Pam Bondi issued new guidelines that eliminated them. “The media should not be afforded special protections,” she wrote in an internal memo. There’s no indication the FBI tried anything less intrusive—no subpoena to the Post, no request for voluntary cooperation, no negotiation—before agents showed up at her door.

Mark Zaid, a national security attorney, told CNN: “In modern times, everything about the Espionage Act regarding treatment of the press has been based on norms and policy, not law.” Everything protecting journalists has been based on tradition and rules, not actual law.

What the Espionage Act Says

The Espionage Act, passed in 1917 during World War I, makes it a federal crime to disclose national defense information to unauthorized people. A specific part of the law applies to anyone who has the information and “willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it.”

Read that language carefully. It doesn’t say “government employees.” It doesn’t exempt journalists. It says “anyone.”

A journalist who receives classified information from a source and publishes it is, technically, communicating national defense information to people not entitled to receive it. The law’s wording appears to cover journalists. Prosecutors could legally charge journalists but have chosen not to, partly from constitutional concerns and partly from policy restraint.

The Supreme Court’s Pentagon Papers decision in 1971 established that officials can’t stop publication before it happens. But that case didn’t address whether they could prosecute journalists after publication. The Supreme Court has never decided which right wins in this situation.

The Pattern: Prosecute Leakers, Not Publishers

Throughout history, administrations have followed the same pattern: go after the leaker, leave the journalist alone. Reality Winner, the NSA contractor who leaked a classified report on Russian election interference to The Intercept, got 63 months in prison. The Intercept journalists who published her leak faced no charges. Thomas Drake disclosed classified NSA surveillance information to reporters and was prosecuted; the reporters weren’t. FBI Special Agent Terry Albury shared classified materials about FBI surveillance practices with The Intercept and received 48 months; the journalists walked away untouched.

The Obama Justice Department named Fox News reporter James Rosen as a potential co-conspirator in a leak case and obtained a warrant for his emails. But it prosecuted only his source, State Department official Stephen Jin-Woo Kim. The aggressive probe prompted such backlash that Obama personally apologized and established the protective guidelines that Bondi has now rescinded.

The closest anyone came to prosecuting a publisher was the Julian Assange case. The Trump administration indicted Assange under the Espionage Act for publishing materials leaked by Chelsea Manning. But the charges focused on him helping to steal the information rather than on the publication itself. When Assange reached a plea deal in 2024, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy. The core question about whether publishing classified information could itself be prosecuted remained unresolved.

Why This Raid Crosses a Line

Even if investigating leakers is legitimate, raiding the reporter’s home represents a significant escalation. The Privacy Protection Act of 1980 restricts when law enforcement can raid journalists’ homes and offices. Either the journalist is suspected of a crime that has nothing to do with their reporting, or there’s an emergency that can’t be handled any other way.

The Justice Department obtained a warrant anyway.

Thirty-one press freedom and civil liberties groups, including the ACLU, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and Reporters Without Borders, issued a joint statement saying this is what the First Amendment was meant to stop. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press called it a major increase in government pressure on the press.

The real problem isn’t about one reporter—it’s about what happens to all her sources. The reporter had a reputation at the Post for getting tips from federal employees because she’d solicited and received more than 1,000 tips from federal employees through Signal, an encrypted messaging app. These sources contacted her because they believed she would keep them anonymous while reporting on how Trump administration changes were affecting government agencies.

If the government can seize a journalist’s devices without charging them with a crime, every source who contacted her could have their identity revealed. Every potential future source has reason to stay silent.

What Federal Authorities Say Happened

Court documents say Perez-Lugones looked at secret reports about an unnamed country starting in October 2025, without permission and without a legitimate reason to see them. By November, he was taking screenshots, printing materials, and physically removing them from the secure facility where they were required to remain. His employer’s security system noticed the suspicious activity and told the FBI.

When agents raided his home and car on January 8, they found a document marked “SECRET” in a lunchbox in his vehicle and additional materials in his basement. Authorities say he was messaging the reporter and sending her information.

President Trump said they had caught someone leaking information about Venezuela. The reporter had recently co-authored a Washington Post article about Venezuela citing government materials, which appears to have triggered suspicion that she was the recipient of Perez-Lugones’s alleged disclosures.

Here’s what’s important: he’s accused of illegally keeping classified information. It doesn’t say he gave the information to anyone. He accessed it without authorization and kept it without authorization. If he didn’t share it with anyone, why did they raid the journalist’s home?

The Implications for National Security Reporting

Most national security reporting that exposes government wrongdoing relies on classified information. Edward Snowden’s leaked information led to reporting that changed surveillance law. Reporting on the CIA’s torture program that led to international criticism relied on leaked classified information. The reporting on military operations that informed public debates about strategy and casualties has frequently involved classified material.

If journalists could be prosecuted for publishing classified information, they’ll be afraid to do it. Even if they win in court, defending against these charges would be extremely expensive. News organizations might refuse to publish sensitive national security stories rather than risk being prosecuted.

If officials can prosecute journalists for publishing classified information, fewer people will leak information, and the public will know less about what the government does. This makes the government less accountable in the area where it matters most.

Jameel Jaffer, who runs the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said: “The search is designed to scare not just this reporter but all reporters from writing stories based on information from government insiders, and to scare people from leaking information.”

Will the Reporter Be Prosecuted?

So far, she hasn’t been charged, and officials say she’s not under investigation. That doesn’t mean she won’t be charged later, but it suggests they were mainly gathering evidence against Perez-Lugones rather than building a case against the reporter.

A prosecutor could charge her with helping to steal the information, claiming she asked a source to leak it. Officials could use her public statements about asking federal employees for tips as evidence. The government could charge her with helping to steal classified information, which doesn’t require proving she published it. Alternatively, they could charge her with receiving stolen government property, which avoids the free speech issue.

Past cases suggest she probably won’t be prosecuted. No journalist has ever been prosecuted for publishing classified information. But the raid itself does much of what the government wants: it shows journalists they can have their homes raided and devices taken, it interferes with an important national security reporter’s work, it scares sources away from talking to journalists, and it shows the government is willing to go further in attacking the press.

The Legal Uncertainty Ahead

Several legal cases will determine whether journalists are prosecuted under the Espionage Act. First, the case against Perez-Lugones will go to federal court, which will determine what information he had and whether he contacted the reporter. Second, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press asked the court to release the document explaining why they raided the reporter’s home, arguing that since the Attorney General already explained it publicly, there’s no reason to keep it secret.

Third, the reporter will almost certainly go to court to argue that the raid violated the Privacy Protection Act and the Fourth Amendment. Those cases will determine whether the Trump administration broke the law by removing protections for journalists, or changed the rules, and whether judges will enforce the 1980 law against the Justice Department.

If courts say the raid was legal, journalists’ homes can be raided in leak investigations even though the law is supposed to prevent that. If courts say the raid broke the law, the government might be punished and the evidence might not be allowed in any future case.

The bigger question—whether journalists can be prosecuted under the Espionage Act for publishing information—will probably stay unanswered unless the Trump administration charges someone. If she’s charged, the case will almost certainly go to the Supreme Court. The justices would have to decide whether the First Amendment lets journalists publish classified information, a question they’ve avoided since the Pentagon Papers case.

The current Supreme Court, which has six conservative justices and three liberal ones, could go either way. Some justices doubt strong free speech protections. Others say press freedom is essential to democracy.

When Assumptions Meet Reality

Prosecutors have never charged journalists for publishing classified information, so it’s been a theoretical question. That choice reflected two things: the belief that the First Amendment protects publication, and the decision to avoid prosecution anyway to protect press freedom.

By removing protections for journalists and raiding a reporter’s home, the Trump administration has made this a real problem. Officials have shown they’re willing to do things that could result in prosecuting journalists.

The law itself is unclear. The Espionage Act’s wording seems to cover anyone who shares classified information with people who shouldn’t have it. The First Amendment doesn’t mention the press, but courts have interpreted it to protect publishing information the public should know about. The Supreme Court has never decided which law wins when journalists publish classified information.

The assumption that the First Amendment protects journalists has held because prosecutors haven’t challenged it. But assumptions break down when powerful people decide to challenge them. The raid of the reporter’s home shows that assumption is starting to break down.

National security reporting depends on sources being willing to leak and journalists being willing to publish. If journalists could be prosecuted, people will stop leaking information about national security. The government becomes less transparent. The public knows less about what the government does. Democracy suffers because voters don’t have the information they need.

The Supreme Court hasn’t decided whether that outcome is allowed by the Constitution. The fact that nobody knows the answer is itself a problem for press freedom and democracy.

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