Pentagon contractor indicted in leak case tied to search of Washington Post reporter’s home

Federal prosecutors say a Pentagon contractor has been indicted on charges that he illegally handled classified national defense information

Washington Post Reporter-Probe

A Pentagon contractor has been indicted on charges of illegally removing and sharing classified national defence information with a journalist, a development that has garnered significant national attention following a federal search of a reporter’s home as part of the investigation.

Aurelio Luis Perez-Lugones faces five counts of unlawfully transmitting and one count of unlawfully retaining classified national defence information, the Justice Department announced on Thursday. The proceedings are linked to last week’s search of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson's home in Virginia, an incident that has drawn considerable scrutiny from press freedom advocates across the nation. These groups contend the situation reflects an increasingly aggressive posture by the Justice Department towards leak investigations involving journalists, sparking widespread concerns about the future of journalistic freedoms.

Perez-Lugones is accused of taking home printouts of classified documents from his workplace and later passing them to a reporter, FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement. A Justice Department news release doesn't name the reporter or the reporter's employer, and the indictment itself wasn't immediately made public. The reporter co-wrote and contributed to at least five articles that contained classified information provided by Perez-Lugones, authorities said.

Investigators found phone messages between Perez-Lugones and the reporter in which they discussed the information that he provided, authorities said. “I’m going quiet for a bit ... just to see if anyone starts asking questions,” Perez-Lugones said after sending one of the documents, according to the news release.

“Illegally disclosing classified defense information is a grave crime against America that puts both our national security and the lives of our military heroes at risk,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement.

Attorneys for Perez-Lugones didn't immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Perez-Lugones, 61, of Laurel, Maryland, has remained jailed since his Jan. 8 arrest. He held a top secret security clearance and is accused of printing out classified and sensitive reports from where he works as a systems engineer and information technology specialist for a government contractor.

In October, Perez-Lugones took a screenshot of a classified intelligence report involving an unspecified foreign country and pasted the image into a Microsoft Word document that he printed out, according to an FBI agent’s affidavit.

Authorities found documents marked “SECRET,” including one in a lunchbox, when they searched his home and car this month, according to court papers.

On Wednesday, the Washington Post asked for a court order requiring authorities to return electronic devices that they seized from reporter Natanson’s home last week. Federal agents seized a phone, two laptops, a recorder, a portable hard drive and a Garmin smartwatch, according to a court filing.

A federal magistrate judge in Alexandria, Virginia, temporarily barred the government from reviewing any material from the seized devices. The judge also scheduled a Feb. 6 hearing on the newspaper’s request.

“The outrageous seizure of our reporter’s confidential newsgathering materials chills speech, cripples reporting, and inflicts irreparable harm every day the government keeps its hands on these materials,” the Post said in a statement.

Natanson has been covering Republican President Donald Trump’s transformation of the federal government. The Post recently published a piece in which she described gaining hundreds of new sources from the federal workforce, leading one colleague to call her “the federal government whisperer.”