A federal judge has exposed serious constitutional violations in the Department of Justice's handling of search warrant applications targeting journalists, according to newly unsealed court records in a case involving a St. Paul church protest last winter.
Magistrate Judge John Docherty rejected two separate warrant applications seeking access to the digital accounts of broadcast journalist Don Lemon and protest documentarian Georgia Fort. The judge issued strikingly blunt rulings, concluding that prosecutors had failed to meet basic legal standards. The Department of Justice ultimately withdrew the requests.
What makes the case particularly troubling is what Docherty found hiding in the fine print of the government's filings: prosecutors deliberately omitted mention of a federal law specifically designed to protect press freedom. The Privacy Protection Act of 1980 requires law enforcement to use a subpoena, rather than a search warrant, when targeting journalists and publishers. That distinction matters enormously.
Under subpoena, news organizations can challenge the demand in court before surrendering sensitive materials. Search warrants bypass that safeguard. Once executed, a warrant exposes sources, seizes newsroom files, and leaves journalists to fight back only after the damage is done. By not disclosing this law to Docherty, prosecutors were essentially trying to get a faster, more secretive path to journalists' work.
Docherty took note. He found that prosecutors had consciously deliberated about whether the statute applied, then decided to keep quiet about it. In their own words to the judge, they thought about the law but chose not to mention it.
This pattern extends beyond the St. Paul case. Federal prosecutors did something strikingly similar when pursuing a search warrant for Washington Post journalist Hannah Natanson's home in Virginia. That judge later acknowledged he might have ruled differently had he known about the Privacy Protection Act.
The omissions amount to a breach of prosecutors' ethical obligation to present relevant law to the court, especially in sealed warrant proceedings where no opposing counsel sits at the table to call out the gaps. Courts have traditionally given Department of Justice attorneys the benefit of the doubt, assuming they act in good faith. That presumption has become untenable.
Among those swept up in the St. Paul protest investigation was photographer Junn Bollmann, arrested for covering the demonstration. Both he and Fort now face prosecution for their work documenting the event. Lemon was also arrested, though his case involves separate circumstances.
The sole reason these government tactics came to light is that Docherty took the unusual step of unsealing the warrant records himself. Many similar abuses may still lurk behind sealed court filings across the country, invisible to public scrutiny. Judges could pressure the Justice Department by referring attorneys to ethics boards or imposing sanctions. Congress could pass legislation requiring prosecutors to affirmatively disclose the Privacy Protection Act when seeking warrants targeting publishers. The proposed Privacy Protection Updates Act would force exactly that transparency.
Without intervention, the pattern will likely continue. The department's recent behavior suggests constitutional protections for press freedom mean little when prosecutors want access to journalists' materials. A judge halted one instance. Stopping the next one will require more than a single ruling.
Author James Rodriguez: "The fact that federal prosecutors thought they could hide a press-protection statute from a judge and get away with it tells you everything about how far the guardrails have eroded."
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