By Liam Reilly, CNN

(CNN) — The Washington Post is demanding in court that the federal government return electronic devices it seized during last week’s FBI search of reporter Hannah Natanson’s home.

“The federal government’s wholesale seizure of a reporter’s confidential newsgathering materials violates the Constitution’s protections for free speech and a free press and should not be allowed to stand,” the paper wrote Wednesday in a filing with the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

The Post’s attorneys requested that the court block the government’s review and order the return of Natanson’s seized devices, which included two phones, two laptops, a Garmin watch, a portable hard drive and a recording device.

Without such an order, the paper wrote, the Department of Justice will conduct an “unrestrained search” of a journalist’s newsgathering tools in a way that “violates the First Amendment and the attorney-client privilege, ignores federal statutory safeguards for journalists, and threatens the trust and confidentiality of sources.”

“The Court should order the immediate return of all seized materials,” the Post’s attorneys wrote. “Anything less would license future newsroom raids and normalize censorship by search warrant.”

The paper added in a statement on Wednesday: “The outrageous seizure of our reporter’s confidential newsgathering materials chills speech, cripples reporting, and inflicts irreparable harm every day the government keeps its hands on these materials.”

Last week, the FBI raided Natanson’s Virginia home as part of its investigation of Aurelio Luis Perez-Lugones, a government contractor with top-level security clearances, who was arrested earlier this month and charged with illegally retaining classified documents.

While both FBI director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi have alleged that Perez-Lugones leaked classified Pentagon files to a Washington Post journalist, he has not been accused in court of illegally leaking any documents to the media.

Donald Trump told reporters last week that a “leaker on Venezuela” is “in jail right now,” but he did not directly connect the arrest to the search of Natanson’s home.

Days before the raid, Natanson, who has spent the past year as the Post’s “federal government whisperer,” co-authored with five other reporters an exclusive story on Venezuela based on “government documents obtained by The Washington Post.”

The Post argued in court that “almost none” of the data seized from Natanson is relevant to the government’s search warrant, “which seeks only records received from or relating to a single government contractor.”

The attorneys also noted that on the same day as the raid, the Justice Department issued a grand jury subpoena to the Post, similarly seeking “substantially” the same records it sought from Natanson.

“Nothing prevented the government from issuing a subpoena to Natanson instead of executing a search warrant,” which is how the government traditionally operates, the Post’s attorneys wrote.

Instead, the newspaper argued, “The government seized this proverbial haystack in an attempt to locate a needle.”

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