Your move, Jeff Bezos

The FBI has searched the home of a reporter

Hannah Natanson, harassed for doing her job

This is a bright line — the New York Times called it “exceedingly rare” — that’s been crossed, and media-watchers everywhere are holding their breath…

…not really. Bezos is a oligarch and he gives two rat farts about freedom of the press, or the Washington Post, or Hannah Natanson or the sources she may have sought to protect.

Instead, the home of Natanson, a Pulitzer-Prize-and Peabody-winning journalist who wrote this piece about being the source for federal workers during the Trump Revenge Tour 2.0, has now been the target of the awesome power of the state.

From that linked piece:

My colleague, veteran federal affairs reporter Lisa Rein, had suggested sharing my contact information in r/fednews, a forum where some 300,000 federal employees were posting every few seconds to commiserate about their fates under a president determined to downsize the bureaucracy. Expecting little, feeling out of my depth — I was an education reporter — I wrote that I wanted to “speak with anyone willing to chat.” Then I listed my contact on Signal, the encrypted messaging app.

The next day, I woke at sunrise to dozens of messages — the ruling pattern of my mornings ever since. I didn’t know it then, but this year would transform me into what one colleague dubbed “the federal government whisperer.” I would gain a new beat, a new editor and 1,169 contacts on Signal, all current or former federal employees who decided to trust me with their stories, feeling calmer, I tried again.

It felt stupid and selfish to worry about going to bed late or working weekends, I told my fiancé, when many federal staffers were losing their livelihoods. When people still employed were risking their livelihoods to talk to me.

Pamela Jo Bondi, hired liar, said Natanson’s home was invaded because (from CNN): Natanson may have been “obtaining and reporting classified and illegally leaked information from a Pentagon contractor.”

Pamela Jo already has a seat saved in hell for lying, so now she can add “illegal harassment” to her list of sins. And the connection between Natanson and the person the FBI is supposedly investigating means that including Natanson in a sweep like this takes a net roughly the size of Rhode Island. This is an intimidation practice, as practices by Mean Girl Pamela Jo.