in her X account\u2019s banner picture<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 told the Post Wednesday.<\/p>\nAgents seized Natanson\u2019s phone, two laptops and a Garmin watch, according to the Washington Post.<\/p>\n
One of the laptops was her personal computer, the other a Washington Post-issued device.<\/p>\n
The target of the investigation is Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a Maryland system administrator who has a top-secret security clearance, the newspaper reported. Perez-Lugones is accused of taking home classified intelligence reports.<\/p>\n
Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement on X the leaker \u201cis currently behind bars.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis past week, at the request of the Department of War, the Department of Justice and FBI executed a search warrant at the home of a Washington Post journalist who was obtaining and reporting classified and illegally leaked information from a Pentagon contractor,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Trump Administration will not tolerate illegal leaks of classified information that, when reported, pose a grave risk to our Nation\u2019s national security and the brave men and women who are serving our country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perez-Lugones has a \u201cTop Secret\u201d security clearance and works as a systems engineer and IT specialist for a government subcontractor in Annapolis Junction, Md., according to a criminal complaint filed in Maryland federal court on Jan. 9.<\/p>\n
An affidavit from an FBI special agent accompanying the complaint alleged that he accessed databases \u201cmaintained by several Government agencies\u201d to \u201cview a classified intelligence report related to a foreign country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perez-Lugones then took screenshots of the report and pasted them into a Microsoft word document that he printed out on Oct.\u00a028, 2025, even though he \u201chad no need to know and was not authorized to search for\u201d its contents, the affidavit stated.<\/p>\n
Between Jan. 5 and 7, he also viewed other classified material and took notes on a yellow legal pad, at least four pages of which he took home.<\/p>\n
Federal agents executed a search warrant on Perez-Lugones\u2019 Laurel, Md., residence on Jan. 8 and discovered \u201cmultiple documents that were marked SECRET,\u201d per the affidavit.<\/p>\n
Natanson covers the federal workforce for the newspaper and described herself as \u201cthe federal government whisperer\u201d in a Dec. 24 first-person piece.<\/p>\n
FBI special agent Keith Starr, who authored the affidavit, concluded: \u201cOne or more of these documents are related to national defense.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perez-Lugones now faces a maximum of 10 years in prison upon conviction for the charge of \u201cunlawful retention of national\u00a0defense information.<\/p>\n
The Department of Justice argued in court filings for Perez-Lugones to be detained after a magistrate judge initially drafted conditional terms of pre-trial release for the defendant.<\/p>\n
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Prosecutors claimed that he \u201cposes a danger to the community.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Defendant is charged with a serious national security violation,\u201d wrote the prosecutors from US Attorney Kelly Hayes\u2019 office in Jan. 13 filing in the District of Maryland.<\/p>\n
\u201cAgents seized documents containing national defense\u00a0information from the Defendant\u2019s car and home. However, the Government cannot seize\u00a0everything in his head,\u201d added the prosecutors Patricia McLane and Thomas Sullivan, who both serve as Assistant US Attorneys, Trial Attorney Menno Goedman, who serves in the DOJ\u2019s National Security Division, and Assistant Attorney General John A. Eisenberg.<\/p>\n
Agents seized Natanson\u2019s phone, two laptops and a Garmin watch, according to the Washington Post.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Defendant has held a security clearance for over 25 years and the\u00a0Government cannot ensure the safety of the country and US military personnel without detention,\u201d the prosecutors added. \u201cOnly detention would provide the government a way to monitor whether the Defendant uses any\u00a0of his knowledge to threaten national security.\u201d<\/p>\n
US District Chief Judge George Levi Russell III agreed to review the conditional release order\u00a0at a hearing in a Baltimore federal courtroom on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Perez-Lugones\u2019 attorneys \u2014 public defenders Francisco Carriedo and Courtney Francik \u2014 did not immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014 The FBI searched the home of a Washington Post reporter Wednesday morning as part of an\u00a0investigation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100214,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[383,5970,24224,1208,9,11,10,87,58,1212],"class_list":["post-100213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-department-of-justice","tag-fbi","tag-fbi-investigations","tag-media","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-politics","tag-us-news","tag-washington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}