Dan Bongino announces he will resign from the FBI in January
FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino announced in January that he would retire as the law enforcement agency’s No. 2 official after less than a year.
The FBI executed a search warrant on the Virginia home of a Washington Post reporter on January 14 as part of an investigation into a system administrator suspected of illegally retaining classified documents, the news organization reported.
Federal agent Hannah Natanson was at her home when the FBI searched her premises and devices and seized her cell phone and Garmin watch, the news agency said.
The FBI’s investigation centers on Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a top-secret government contractor who is accused of accessing and exchanging classified intelligence reports, The Washington Post reported, citing an FBI affidavit.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement published in X that the search warrants were executed at the request of the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice. She accused the reporter of “obtaining and reporting confidential information that was illegally leaked from a Pentagon contractor.”
Bondi said the leaker was in jail, but did not provide the person’s name or details.
“The Trump Administration will not tolerate illegal leaks of classified information that, if reported, pose grave risks to our national security and the brave men and women who serve our country,” Bondi said.
USA TODAY has reached out to the FBI for comment. The Washington Post is reviewing and monitoring the situation, the paper confirmed to USA TODAY.
The search warrant has raised First Amendment concerns among press freedom advocates.
Jenna Leventov, a senior policy adviser at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the organization is “deeply alarmed” by the search efforts “especially against the backdrop of the administration’s escalating war on press freedom.”
“Threatening journalists for source information undermines the fundamental principle that the press should be free to hold governments to account,” Leventov said. “Congress should act urgently to protect journalists, sources, and the First Amendment from this type of abuse of power by reintroducing and passing the Press Act.”
The organization has been advocating for such legislation for years. The bill, short for the “Protecting Reporters from Exploitative State Espionage Act,” was passed by the House of Representatives in 2024. The bill was intended to protect journalists and their sources from government investigations.
Natanson won a 2024 Peabody Award for reporting on gun violence in schools and was part of a group of reporters who won a Pulitzer Prize for Public Achievement for their coverage of the Jan. 6, 2021, riots, according to his profile on the paper’s website.
This is a developing story.
Breanna Frank is USA TODAY’s First Amendment reporter. please contact her bjfrank@usatoday.com.
USA TODAY’s coverage of First Amendment issues is funded by the Freedom Forum in collaboration with our journalism funding partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.
