Party of free speech raids reporter’s home

Here’s a story you won’t be seeing on CBS news:

The FBI executed a search warrant Wednesday morning at a Washington Post reporter’s home as part of an investigation into a government contractor accused of illegally retaining classified government materials.

The reporter, Hannah Natanson, was at her home in Virginia at the time of the search. Federal agents searched her home and her devices, seizing her phone, two laptops and a Garmin watch. One of the laptops was her personal computer, the other a Post-issued laptop.

The Post also received a subpoena Wednesday morning seeking information related to the same government contractor, according to a person familiar with the law enforcement action. The subpoena asked the Post to hand over any communications between the contractor and other employees.

It is exceptionally rare for law enforcement officials to conduct searches at reporters’ homes. Federal regulations intended to protect a free press are designed to make it difficult to use aggressive law enforcement tactics against reporters to obtain the identities of their sources or information.

I assume that part of the reason the WaPo is being targeted is as a message to Bezos that creating an op-ed page for people who like the Wall Street Journal’s but consider it too highbrow and insufficiently partisan isn’t enough. One could also argue that Trump administration investigations based on the unlawful possession of classified documents are not being inducted entirely in good faith.

These kinds of actions are going to keep escalating, and trying to curry favor with the regime won’t stop them.