Should a judge be expected to know when a prosecutor’s request is illegal? I would have thought so. But that turns out to be not the case with regard to a Washington Post reporter whose home was raided by the FBI last month as part of a leak investigation targeting a Pentagon contractor.
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New York Times reporter Charlie Savage reported recently that the Justice Department had failed to tell a judge that a 1980 federal law prohibited the government from seeking a journalist’s reporting materials in most instances. Because of that failure, the judge issued a warrant to search the home of Post reporter Hannah Natanson — a shocking move given that journalists are generally summoned to court and given an opportunity argue against being forced to turn over their documents.