Another day, another humiliating setback for President Donald Trump’s Justice Department — and another awkward moment for Attorney General Pam Bondi, repeatedly tasked with executing the president’s hard-edged agenda only to see it stall under judicial pushback. Federal agents swooped into a Virginia home in January, boxing up laptops, a recorder, a hard drive, even a Garmin watch. The target wasn’t a dangerous suspect but a Washington Post reporter who had done nothing more than her job. At the time, the Justice Department framed the raid as a routine leak investigation carried out in the name of national security. U.S. US Attorney General Pam Bondi attends a press briefing held at the White House February 20, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Aaron Schwartz/Getty Images) Weeks later, the very judge who authorized the takedown took a second look and reached a different conclusion: the government investigators now asking for trust no longer deserved it. Earlier this week, U.S. Magistrate Judge William Porter made that judgment explicit, blocking the Justice Department from searching the seized devices of journalist Hannah Natanson and sharply rebuking prosecutors for how they handled the case.  ‘He’s a Very Sick Man’: Trump Is Still Reeling Over SOTU Standoff and the Unhinged Post He Just Fired Off Has People Flat-Out Asking When Enough Is Enough In a blistering 22-page opinion, Porter reversed course after initially authorizing the seizure, ruling that the DOJ, led by Bondi, could not be trusted to police itself in light of its omissions, shifting explanations, and priorities that put hunting down leaks ahead of protecting First Amendment freedoms.  Now, instead of allowing a government “filter team” to review the materials, Porter ordered that the court itself would conduct the examination — a rare and humiliating step that deepened the DOJ’s embarrassment and highlighted growing judicial skepticism of its actions. The ruling stems from a Jan. 14 pre-dawn raid on Natanson’s home, when FBI agents seized her electronic devices. Law enforcement officials said the search was tied to an investigation of Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a Pentagon contractor with top-secret clearance who was indicted in Maryland last month on charges of unlawfully obtaining and sharing classified materials. Natanson, a Harvard graduate, was told she was not the focus of the investigation. The FBI raided the home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson this week.While the government says the raid was part of a leak probe not directly targeting Natanson, free speech expert @JameelJaffer says “it's hard not to see it as an effort to intimidate not just… pic.twitter.com/8ilGMesnbg— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) January 15, 2026 Prosecutors later acknowledged that only a small portion of the information on Natanson’s devices would be relevant to the case. They asked Porter to allow government investigators to sift through the devices and pass along any responsive material. Porter refused. In his opinion, Porter concluded that “the government could not be trusted to conduct a review of the devices on its own.” Allowing prosecutors to oversee the search, he wrote, risked exposing more than 1,000 of the reporter’s confidential sources. “Given the documented reporting on government leak investigations and the government’s well chronicled efforts to stop them, allowing the government’s filter team to search a reporter’s work product — most of which consists of unrelated information from confidential sources — is the equivalent of leaving the government’s fox in charge of the Washington Post’s henhouse,” Porter wrote. He added: “The concern that a filter team may err by neglect, by malice, or by honest difference of opinion is heightened where its institutional interests are so directly at odds with the press freedom values at stake.” A federal judge blocked the DOJ from conducting a search of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s seized devices, warning it would threaten her First Amendment rights and likening it to putting “the fox in charge of the henhouse.”pic.twitter.com/EuCZ8wMzSH— WarMonitor (@TheWarMonitor) February 26, 2026 Rather than order the immediate return of the devices, Porter directed that the court itself would review the seized materials and flag anything relevant to the FBI’s probe — an extraordinary workaround that signals deep mistrust of the Justice Department. The ruling landed with force online, where critics of the administration framed it as confirmation of long-held fears about the weaponization of the Justice Department under President Donald Trump.  One reaction on MSN read: “More and more the alarm is being sounded – this administration can’t be trusted. From the top on down. If – IF – the DOJ has already searched those devices, anything they uncovered will be illegal inadmissible in a court of law. I can’t wait till the courts say ‘There’s nothing there’ and Blondi shoots herself in the foot – ‘But look what I found!’ Oops.” Another commenter said: “Porter concluded that the government could not be trusted to conduct a review of the devices on its own. Doesn’t that pretty much say it all about the Trump/Bondi DOJ!” Others expressed outrage over Bondi’s latest setback.  “I have no idea how this female ever obtains a law license or managed to pass any states bar exam. She is the head (as in talking head) of what is easily the most corrupt DOJ in the 250yr. history of this nation,” one post said. “Yet her demeaner and attitude shows clearly that she doesn’t care one bit about our laws or the concept of law and order. She claims … at a hearing, ‘this is not a circus,’ yet she acts like the biggest clown since Barnum and Bailey went out of business …” A separate reaction framed the episode as a missed opportunity: “The sad part of this is she is a woman in a job that is very IMPORTANT and she bends over for Trump. Please tell me why she would do this when she could have had a great legacy of being the AG of the U.S. She will probably be disbarred and then end up in jail for the lies and illegal things she has done.” View on Threads The decision marked a partial victory for Natanson and The Washington Post, which warned that a government search of her devices would constrain sources and undermine reporting. In a statement, the paper said, “we applaud the court’s recognition of core First Amendment protections.” Porter’s opinion also faulted prosecutors for failing to inform him, before he approved the warrant, about the Privacy Protection Act of 1980 — a federal law designed to limit government searches of journalists’ work product. Their omission, he wrote, “has seriously undermined the Court’s confidence in the government’s disclosures in this proceeding.” Prosecutor Gordon Kromberg said at a hearing that he did not raise the law because he did not believe it applied. Porter rejected that reasoning, noting that even if the law would not have changed his decision, he had a right to consider it in advance. According to Porter, the Justice Department also failed to tell him that Natanson was not the target of the investigation — a fact he said he only learned later through media reports — despite multiple discussions with prosecutors and senior officials before the warrant was approved. ‘The Alarm Is Being Sounded’: Federal Judge Reverses Course After Realizing Pam Bondi’s DOJ Can’t Be Trusted and Blocks Their Latest Vindictive Move In Trump’s Name ...read more read less