What is a warrant?
There is no single answer.
A warrant might be an order for arrest. It could be the piece of paper signed by a governor authorizing an execution. It could be a demand that someone appear in court or turn over property in a dispute. An extradition warrant transfers custody of a prisoner from one jurisdiction to another. There are no-knock warrants, child custody warrants, bench warrants — even a 1980s glam metal band named Warrant.
But the warrant people are likely to know best is the search warrant.
A search warrant is permission from a judge to gain access to something that would otherwise be private. It is the legal key that opens your home, your purse, your office. It can even compel the production of your DNA.
This is common. It can happen during something as ordinary as a traffic stop, when police have a suspicion and ask a court for authority to look further. It can begin an investigation or follow from information already uncovered.
On Wednesday, Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson was the subject of a warrant served on her home in Virginia. The newspaper called it a raid. Natanson, who reports on the federal government, had her phone, two laptops and a smartwatch seized.
According to the warrant, the search was not connected to wrongdoing by Natanson or the Post. That is not unusual. Warrants are often served on one person in pursuit of a case against another. In this instance, the Associated Press reported the investigation involved a government contractor accused of “illegally retaining classified government materials.”
Search warrants can be very public. Federal agents executed one in 2023 at Mar-a-Lago in pursuit of classified materials allegedly retained by former President Donald Trump, who disputed its legitimacy. But that warrant targeted the subject of an investigation — not a journalist doing her job.
And that distinction matters.
While journalists are not above the law, there historically are lines that protect exercise of freedom of the press. Those often include protection of notes and sources.
Yes, journalists have gone to prison rather than revealing a source. But is that what is happening here?
Those cases generally involve defiance after efforts by the court to have a reporter provide information. This jumps over that hurdle, avoiding resistance and simply taking what the government wants.
This is not testing a principle or arguing the law. This is pulling a tooth out of the jaw.
A search warrant is a powerful tool because it is so hard to challenge — and because having a properly obtained and properly served warrant is what makes the investigation and any prosecution that follows it acceptable in court. But that cannot be simply a checking of boxes. It must respect the purpose of both the investigation and the opposition.
If a journalist is the subject of an investigation, there is an obvious defense in the First Amendment. When the journalist is not the target, that becomes complicated. Is prosecution an attack on freedom of the press if the press is not being prosecuted?
Instead, journalism can become collateral damage — and yet the collateral can seem very much the point. If that damage is predictable, it seems not only inappropriate but unwarranted.