By Jan Wolfe
Feb 9 (Reuters) – A press freedom organization has urged Virginia’s attorney licensing body to discipline a federal prosecutor who applied for a warrant last month to search the home of a Washington Post reporter.
In a February 6 letter to the Virginia State Bar, Freedom of the Press Foundation said prosecutor Gordon D. Kromberg appeared to have withheld information from the magistrate judge who approved the warrant as part of a leak investigation.
The complaint asserted that Kromberg likely violated ethics rules by not informing the judge of the Privacy Protection Act of 1980, a law that limits searches for reporting materials.
The complaint alleged that Kromberg was likely “well aware of applicable law, but deliberately chose not to mention it,” violating a state ethics rule mandating that lawyers disclose to judges legal authorities “adverse to the position of the client.”
“We request that this office take appropriate disciplinary action, up to and including disbarment, and that it expedite disciplinary proceedings due to the dire consequences for First Amendment freedoms if illegal newsroom raids and seizures of journalists’ work product are allowed to go unchecked,” the complaint stated.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The reporter, Hannah Natanson, has covered U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign to fire hundreds of thousands of federal workers and shift remaining workers to implementing his agenda.
In a note to staff, Washington Post Executive Editor Matt Murray said FBI agents searched Natanson’s home and seized her electronic devices. He said she and the paper are not a target of the probe, which is linked to a government contractor accused of illegally retaining classified materials.
Prosecutors allege the contractor, Aurelio Perez-Lugones, took screenshots of classified intelligence reports and printed those documents, according to a criminal complaint.
Investigators also found documents marked “secret” in a lunchbox in Perez-Lugones’ car and in his basement, according to an FBI affidavit.
“The Trump Administration will not tolerate illegal leaks of classified information that, when reported, pose a grave risk to our Nation’s national security,” U.S. Attorney General Bondi said on X in January.
(Reporting by Jan Wolfe; Editing by Amy Stevens and Diane Craft)
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