Politics

Who is Hannah Natanson? This is the Washington Post reporter whose house was raided by the FBI

Inside Natanson’s rise at the Post, her access to Trump-era sources, and the investigation behind the FBI raid.

Carlos Barria

Scottish sports journalist and content creator. After running his own soccer-related projects, in 2022 he joined Diario AS, where he mainly reports on the biggest news from around Europe’s leading soccer clubs, Liga MX and MLS, and covers live games in a not-too-serious tone. Likes to mix things up by dipping into the world of American sports.

Update: Jan 14th, 2026 16:29 EST

Early Wednesday, the FBI, at the request of the Pentagon, raided the home of Hannah Natanson, the Washington Post’s self-styled “government whisperer,” who has been a key figure in the newspaper’s “most high-profile and sensitive coverage” of Donald Trump’s second term to date.

Why did the FBI raid Hannah Natanson’s home?

Agents reportedly arrived unannounced at Natanson’s Virginia home, seizing her Garmin watch, phone, and two laptop computers. The raid is connected to an investigation involving a government contractor accused of illegally possessing classified materials.

Natanson recently published an article describing how she acquired hundreds of new government sources. She claimed she receives calls at all hours from federal workers detailing how Trump was “rewriting their workplace policies, firing their colleagues or transforming their agency’s missions.”

Missions were shattered. Entire agencies were deleted. Nearly 300,000 employees were forced out of the federal workforce.

Here’s a look into how DOGE and the White House carried out a once-unthinkable transformation of the federal government: https://t.co/GE1FKNqc0m
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) December 21, 2025

The reporter also spoke openly about obtaining information “people inside government agencies weren’t supposed to tell me.”

Those revelations may have played a role in the FBI’s interest, although Natanson is not the focus of the investigation. According to Attorney General Pam Bondi, the journalist was “obtaining and reporting classified and illegally leaked information from a Pentagon contractor,” who has since been imprisoned.

This 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. The leaker is…
— Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) January 14, 2026

The contractor at the center investigation

Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a systems engineer and information technology specialist with top secret security clearance is the man being investigated, accused of taking classified documents home without authorization.

Natanson’s rise at the Washington Post

According to her LinkedIn profile, Natanson began working at the Washington Post as a reporting intern in the summer of 2018, before taking on a second internship during the second half of 2019.

Natanson earned a bachelor’s degree magna cum laude with highest honors in English from Harvard University in 2019.

She later spent more than five years working as an education reporter before shifting to cover “Trump’s reshaping of government and the effects” in January 2025.

Newsroom backlash

In an email to Washington Post employees, as reported by The Guardian, executive editor Matt Murray wrote: “This extraordinary, aggressive action is deeply concerning and raises profound questions and concern around the constitutional protections for our work.”