Well Of Course They're Raiding The Washington Post! Did Jeff Bezos Think They Would Do *Not That*?

A bad new low, man.

Photo by Hannah Tu on Unsplash

On Wednesday, Day 359 of the Donroe Doctrine for Don-minating all that He surveys, the FBI descended on the Virginia home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson, seizing her phone, her personal laptop and her work one, and a Garmin watch. And the Post got a subpoena too, though the feds are insisting that the reporter and Post are not the targets.

What flicked the feds’ balls? They told Natanson they were investigating one Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a contractor and systems administrator in Maryland with a Top Secret security clearance that they suspect of accessing and taking home military classified intelligence reports that the FBI claimed in an affidavit had been found during a search of his lunchbox and his basement.

No further comment, how rich from the guy who keeps risking the DOJ’s cases and destroying their reputation because he will not shut up about suspects in custody who aren’t, or talking out his ass about suspects who are in custody, or walking all over crime scenes to take pictures for content.

‘Member when as an official at the Office of Director of National Intelligence during Trump 1.0, Patel set himself to declassifying politically sensitive documents from the Obama administration to try to show some RUSSIA HOAX and UNMASKING MIKE FLYNN, and then even Ric Grenell was like, those documents don’t show that, go fish, dummy.

No, the only “intelligence” Patel has ever been interested in is the kind that makes wizardly vengeance for King Donald against the mean old media and any and all other enemies, gang gang!

And hmm, the affidavit in support of the retaining-information charge does not accuse Perez-Lugones of leaking information to a journalist or anyone else, just that he viewed and printed out pages of secret materials that he shouldn’t have, then took and retained them in his home. Perez-Lugones has notably not been charged with espionage, the way Reality Winner was and then convicted of in 2018 after removing classified material from a government facility then mailing it to the Intercept. Hasn’t been charged with that yet, anyhow.

And derp, Kash Patel and Pam Bondi lied about him being in custody too; a magistrate judge released Perez-Lugones immediately after court on January 8.

But, maybe superseding espionage charges are coming because Perez-Lugones did some real bad thing, like leaking Pentagon secrets about a cocktail of outrageous war crimes, sloppy OPSEC, and/or petty-bitch internal drama going on in Pete Hegseth’s department of War and Haircuts that somehow endangers the lives of US soldiers, hic.

Or mayyybbee Kash Patel et al. just wanted to get their greasy paws on whatever is in Natanson and the Post’s boxes, and finally found an excuse to let them go raid their enemies at the Fourth Estate. A year ago, Natanson was mostly an education reporter, but then DOGE struck, and the whistleblower-protecting life chose her. Her Signal became a go-to outlet for traumatized civil servants across federal agencies, at least 1,169 of them. And Natanson has also contributed to several articles about the American pressure campaign on Venezuela before the junta that Trump, Hegseth et al. did so good at, hic.

The 1980 Privacy Protection Act generally bars search warrants for reporters’ work materials, unless the reporters themselves are suspected of committing a crime, which is not the case here.

But hoo boy how Kash Patel, Hegseth, and all of Trump’s petty little bitches are throbbing to know who in the Pentagon and all the letter agencies have been blowing whistles on them!

Remember that forbidden safe of mystery that Trump so feared, known to sit in the office of The National Enquirer’s David Pecker, stuffed full of the shared secrets that the Enquirer had caught and killed on behalf of celebrities who were willing to do Pecker some favor, though, like give him an exclusive about themselves or dirt on someone else? See also, tales of Michael Jackson’s little-boy sleepovers replaced in their pulpy pages with exclusive photos of a tea party with Bubbles the chimp, Bill Cosby getting rape stories buried in exchange for an exclusive, and oh yeah, the Enquirer’s own failed attempted blackmail of the Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos, over his then-extramarital affair with Lauren Sanchez. Regretting sucking Trump’s taint yet, Beezobubba? Oh, reporters are having a fit because Bezos hasn’t said shit?

Trump, Hegseth, Patel, and friends are surely in a paranoid fit like cheaters doing once-overs for lipstick and stray hairs about what scandals and/or crimes Natanson and the Post might have caught in their digital Pecker safes and are waiting for the right circumstances to publish.

What warfighter(s) at the Pentagon war-crimed in Venezuela in ways even more disgusting than we already know? Who at the FBI has been ratting out a certain superduperinvestigator at a three-letter agency for using government planes to pitch woo to his much-younger girlfriend, who else at the FBI knew about the time Patel wouldn’t get off his plane until agents found him a women’s jacket and sewed on some patches so he would look like a Big Boy Agent? Where is Russia’s dream date Tulsi Gabbard getting her toenails clipped these days? Which naughty DOGE boys were stalking whistleblowers with drones and taping threatening notes to their doors for narc-ing on their secret servers connected to Russia? E/inquiring minds want to know!

For the sake of poor whistleblowers, let’s hope Post reporters practiced better OPSEC with their data than the Pentagon has with their war plans, hic.

To be continue!

[Washington Post gift link / Washington Post archive link / Bloomberg]