The FBI searched a home yesterday morning as part of an investigation surrounding illegally kept classified documents. It’s a story we’ve heard all too often in recent years, but since the subject of the raid is not named Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, or Donald Trump, it won’t get the same level of attention.

The subject in this case is Hannah Natanson, a reporter for The Washington Post. She “was at her home in Virginia at the time of the search,” reported the Post. “Federal agents searched her home and her devices, seizing her phone, two laptops and a Garmin watch. One of the laptops was her personal computer, the other a Post-issued laptop.”

Furthermore, “Investigators told Natanson that she is not the focus of the probe. The warrant said that law enforcement was investigating Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a system administrator in Maryland who has a top-secret security clearance and has been accused of accessing and taking home classified intelligence reports from secure government facilities that were later found in his lunch box and his basement, according to an FBI affidavit.”

Traditionally, most people — especially journalists — view journalists as having special protection against such searches because of the “chilling” effect we’re always told such things have on the First Amendment right to freedom of the press. I don’t say it that way to sound dismissive of fundamental rights but to highlight the high regard with which journalists hold themselves. They behave like activists and then expect to be utterly immune from consequences.

Journalists seem to think a former president can be prosecuted for felonies relating to classified information, but that they are immunized from even the inconvenience of a search warrant.

Perez-Lugones was arrested last week for leaks about Venezuela because, as Attorney General Pam Bondi said, “The Trump Administration will not tolerate illegal leaks of classified information that, when reported, pose a grave risk to our Nation’s national security and the brave men and women who are serving our country.”

Just today, our Thomas Gallatin warns that Trump’s Justice Department is crossing some lines to engage in lawfare that looks an awful lot like the efforts of the previous administration. As if to illustrate that point, this raid hearkens back to actions taken by the last two Democrat presidents.

Living in what seems like an alternate reality, an accompanying Washington Post story bears this headline: “Journalists confront new reality in reporting after FBI raid.” The article begins by playing up the fear and butt-covering response of other reporters, who “said they moved swiftly to secure their phones and laptops, reassure confidential sources and consult newsroom leaders as they worried about the federal government’s seizure of devices containing sensitive information.”

Again, I’m not saying that journalists or their sources don’t deserve rights and protections, including, in some cases, anonymity. In fact, quite the opposite. I’m also saying that Democrat administrations did the same thing Trump’s DOJ is doing now.

Ask James Rosen, Catherine Herridge, and Sharyl Attkisson about the experience of having personal tech items seized or otherwise being subject to government pressure. The Post could have asked them, but instead doesn’t name any of them. Its story obliquely mentions Rosen only as “a Fox News reporter,” and the Post’s implication is actually to praise then-Attorney General Eric Holder for his response to that episode.

The Post also brings up other investigations by the first Trump administration, again heroically casting Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, as a stalwart defender of a free press for his subsequent actions that “banned using search warrants and subpoenas to obtain journalists’ materials or compel testimony about their sources.”

Bondi reversed that order, though the Post says she “reinstated much of Holder’s framework.”

Journalists do have enumerated protection in the First Amendment. They do have a duty to hold the government accountable for how it comports with the U.S. Constitution. They do have the right to confidential sources so that appropriate whistleblowing can take place. Any government action against reporters better have rock-solid justification.

The rub with this story is that so many Leftmedia reporters simply have an ax to grind only against Republican administrations and politicians. They’re blind to or utterly shameless in their own hypocrisy because they are effectively agents working on behalf of the Democrat Party. That’s almost doubly true of The Washington Post, which, for example, won a Pulitzer for its bogus reporting on the Russia-collusion hoax. And that’s why I can’t help but roll my eyes at the Post’s outrage here.

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