The Post requested an expedited briefing and hearing schedule. Porter ordered the government to file a response by January 28 and scheduled oral arguments for February 6.
Message: “The government refused” to stop the search
FBI agents reportedly seized Natanson's phone, a 1TB portable hard drive, an interview recording device, a Garmin watch, a personal laptop and a laptop issued by The Washington Post. Natanson has said she has built a contact list of 1,100 current and former government employees and communicates with them in encrypted Signal chats.
“The day the FBI raided Natanson's home, the undersigned counsel contacted the government to advise that the seized items contained material protected by the First Amendment and attorney-client privilege,” attorneys for The Washington Post and Natanson told the court. “The undersigned counsel asked the government not to review the documents pending a judicial resolution of the dispute, but the government refused.”
The filing said that unless a standstill order is issued, “the government will begin an indefinite search for a journalist's work product that violates the First Amendment and attorney-client privilege, ignores federal legal safeguards for journalists, and threatens the trust and confidentiality of sources.”
The six devices seized from Natanson “contain essentially her entire professional universe: more than 30,000 Post emails from the past year alone, confidential information from and about sources (including her sources and her colleagues' sources), interview recordings, notes on story concepts and ideas, drafts of potential stories, communications with colleagues about sources and stories, and The Post's content management system that houses all current articles,” the Post said. “The devices also contained Natanson's encrypted Signal messaging platform, which she used to communicate with her more than 1,100 sources. Without her devices, she is 'literally unable to contact' these sources.”
