WAPO Win in Natanson Warrant Case Holds Important Lessons for Visionary Religion Lawyers
Posted: Thu Feb 26, 2026 10:29 pm
WAPO Win in Natanson Warrant Case Holds Important Lessons for Visionary Religion Lawyers
by Charles Carreon
2/25/26
Transcript
Good afternoon. It's February 25, 2026
and this is Charles Carreon and I am here
in Silver City, New Mexico to talk about
law and policy and uh visionary medicine
and uh search warrants and the
Department of Justice.
And uh let me uh start out by sharing my
screen with you here. Let's see the
screen.
Here we go. Done it last. All righty.
Federal judge rejects government's
request to search Washington Post
reporters devices.
And uh this pretty much tells a story uh
that uh federal judge rejected the
Department of Justice's demand to
continue its search of a Washington Post
reporter's phone and other electronic
devices for information that might help
an FBI investigation into the leaking of
classified information.
So, uh, this is another case of the, uh,
DOJ managing to
get in trouble with the federal judge
basically because, as we're going to
discover, they just don't care about
following the law and very likely really
just don't know what they're doing.
They're embroiled in ethical misconduct
everywhere. And the reason is pretty
simp. They have fired or seen most of
the smart lawyers at the DOJ league
because anyone smart is not going to
work in a
slave factory um where you're forced to
lie to judges and you don't even get to
have the dignity of being an honest
advocate. Um, it takes a stupid not
very, you know, intelligent person to
think that that's the right way to
conduct a law practice. And so that's
really all they've got left at the DOJ.
I mean, I'm sure there are some people
with brains and no ethics, but that's
kind of a rare combination actually.
Ethics leads to intelligent conduct and
intelligent conduct always suggests
ethical approaches. So, um, where are we
going to start out? Well, I'm going to
tell you, um, what happened here. I've
got some notes that I'm going to refer
to. What happened was, um, January 8th,
2026,
the Department of Justice
charged a man named Perez Lugones.
that's just his last name, Perez
Lugones, arrested him and charged him
with unlawful retention of defense
information. And then 4 days later on
January 12th, they went to the court and
they said they needed to search
Nathansson's house and seize all of her
devices.
And because there was information about
her communications with Mr. Perez
Lugones, why would she have
communications with him? because she has
assiduously cultivated informant
relationships on the um r/fed news
subreddit on Reddit and has actually
contacted 1,200 leakers
who are communicating with her or have
been communicating with her via signal.
And so apparently this is one person um
who is the government claims um has
leaked information to Miss Nathansson
who is a Washington Post reporter.
Um the judge denied the uh search
warrant because you know as usual the
Department of Justice doesn't really
have control of its case anymore. or
they just have to rush ahead and do
whatever the crazy man at the top of the
heap is shouting about today in his
orange rage. And um so the warrant is
rejected and the next day they try
again. They be in heavier people and
it's rejected again. Then the judge, the
magistrate judge, too kindly, altogether
too kindly, spends five hours going back
and forth with these guys and finally
issues a search warrant with very
specific limits to only information
about Mr. Pettis Lugonus's communication
from October 1, 2025 to the present. So
basically, what's up? It's about a
5-month period about one man. What do
they do? Well, they execute that search
warrant and um
they uh seize basically all of her
laptops, her phones, everything. Put her
completely out of business. All of her
sources go silent
and therefore Pam Bondi accomplished her
goal. She destroyed Miss Nathansson's
ability to communicate with,200
informants. They're not coming forth
anymore. So mission accomplished and
when you think that there's a victory
here well well there is but only to the
extent that we can start getting the
department of justice to behave justly
because that is not what it is about and
you know that I know that the uh
department of justice lawyers and are
then uh contacted by the Washington Post
lawyers they talk for six days DOJ guys
are never able to do a deal because they
don't have any authority. So, they can't
agree on anything. They refuse to hold
off on searching the materials any
further. Washington Post lawyers go to
the court and invoke uh a important
search warrant case from the fourth
circuit and get a standstill order and
apparently the government complies with
it. A standstill order meaning don't
look at anything.
So then the arguments are joined
and
what happens? Well, let's go ahead and
take a share of the article it of the uh
court ruling. Where is
it's not showing up. Maybe if I open it
in a tab that will probably doesn't want
to see it in Adobe. So sorry guys. Okay,
there we go. Now we should be able to
see it for you. Okay. So, share away
and
screen share. There we go. Okay, folks.
So, taking a look here at the screen
share. We've got
the basic facts that we just went
through. And now we'll go down to the
point where the judge starts blowing up
because it's worth giving it to him
verbatim.
These are all the facts that I just went
through.
And
here we go. And so then the judge goes
through the arguments of both parties.
The government of course says it can
keep everything and that their lawyers
can sort through anything it needs to be
sorted through. And of course the
Washington Post lawyers say no um you
just give it back to us and we'll comply
with this subpoena that you sent to the
Washington Post. And um so those are
basically the arguments that are posed.
And then of course there's the
alternative of having the judge go
through the files and not letting the
Department of Justice do it because they
can't be trusted. And ultimately uh you
know no suspense here. That's how the
judge rules. But um let's take a look at
this part before reaching the merits.
The court addresses a matter of
significant concern. the government's
failure to identify and analyze the
privacy protection act of 1980
in its search warrant application. Okay.
And so he says I had never received the
court had never received such an
application. In other words never
received a search warrant application to
uh search a reporter and was unaware of
the PPA. Okay. I just want to do a quick
little experiment and see how it goes if
we just go directly over to Chat GPT and
I'm going to share a different page with
you now. Just go over to chat and see
what happens. I haven't tried this. Um,
see what happens if we ask it. As a
federal law expert, please identify
any
statutes
that regulate
the DOJ's use of warrants
to seize
information
and property
from reporters,
journalists. Let's just uh Okay, let's
see what happens. Let's see if the judge
could have figured this out using chat
GP. There we go. It's working away. Yep,
there it is. Pops up right away.
Important statutes like the Privacy
Protection Act. Okay, so here the judge,
magistrate judge probably got himself.
He's got he's probably got three really
smart clerks, you know, them basic
stuff. So, uh there you go. uh just
assuming that a judge is going to
research the law just because it's
search warrant application. That's a big
assumption to make and apparently not a
safe one. So, uh let's go back to the
opinion because it's it's filled with
juicy stuff and go
back to the opinion. Yeah, you can learn
something by reading them. And what do I
want to learn here? Well, I want to
learn what they did that was so bad.
Okay. And what they did is right here.
The PPA, the Privacy Protection Act, is
directed at government lawyers in its
terms require the attorney general to
issue regulations. Oh, wow. They already
issued them. Look, they're here at 28.
Go to federal regulations. 50.1083.
Gee, you'd think they might know that.
and the Department of Justice Manual 913
for Oh gosh, just how can you help but
want to look that up, you know? Give me
a second here. So, let's find our
Justice Manual. Take a look at that. Oh,
look at this. Obtaining evidence. There
it is. It's right
in here. So, let's switch you over here
and let's take a look at it. Here we go.
See, they have a whole manual over at
the Department of Justice. Thing is,
they don't like to read it. And so what
did we learn? We're supposed to be
looking at 9-13400.
So that's not very hard to do. Here it
is. G whole code federal regulations and
justice department manual section.
obtaining information from or records of
members of the news media and
questioning, arresting or charging
members of the news media. The purpose
of these regulations is to strike the
proper balance between the public's
interest in the free dissemination of
ideas and information, the public's
interest in effective law enforcement,
and the fair administration of justice.
Under this policy, the department will
continue to limit the use of compulsory
legal process recognizing that
investigative techniques relating to
news gathering are an extraordinary
measure to be deployed as a last resort
once essential to a successful
investigation or prosecution. So let's
ask ourselves how they did in reaching
the balance. What did they do? They were
looking for information about one leaker
who had been criminally charged. So they
seized all of her computers, all of her
phones, all of her written work, and put
her completely out of business.
So it would seem to me that they got
that policy completely upside down. They
have caused huge harm to obtain a tiny
bit of evidentiary benefit in one case.
What we see here
is um as I said a lawless department of
justice that is bent upon
what they've already accomplished here
which is to silence leakers and to
intimidate the press so that they don't
pursue these kinds of stories. And it
didn't work. Um, the judge was quite
disturbed by it, who's quite upset by
the shenanigans they pulled. And I'm
going to take a look at another source
of info here for me. Get you some quotes
from the judge. They tell him, "Oh, we
we didn't we didn't know either." And
um, this judge says, "How could you miss
it? How could you think it didn't apply?
And how what effect did it have on the
case?" It judge said this omission this
failure to tell me about the privacy
protection act has seriously undermined
the court's confidence in the
government's disclosures. And the third
one the court finds that seizing the
totality of a reporter's electronic work
product
constitutes a restraint on the exercise
of first amendment rights
and nothing like a good cliche to uh
wrap up the analysis. the equivalent
letting the government um look through
the documents without any control over
that is the equivalent of leaving the
government's Fox in charge of the
Washington Post's hen house. So um the
uh judge was not pleased. It caused them
to lose this. This was called a 41G
motion under the rules of federal
criminal procedure and it allowed them
to dig into the honesty or dishonesty
um of the FBI agent who swore out the
affidavit. Now, I'm going to segue over
into a topic of my own interest, which
is visionary religion.
And um I'm going to discuss how the
visionary religion community suffers
from the same types of abuses that
Nathansson suffered in this case. Now
what happens in your average case that
involves a visionary religion
practitioner?
they um
usually um end up having their home
searched because they ordered some
vegetable substance from Peru or
Colombia, usually Peru. And it might be
Iawaska, it might contain a little bit
of DMT, it might be cocoa leaves. Um it
uh let's just say it's one of those. And
so both of those are scheduled
controlled substances. Um IA is contains
a controlled substance is
dimethylryptamine and therefore the
government considers it a controlled
substance even though Iaska itself isn't
on the list but DMT is. So what happens
is the government gets a search warrant.
The postal uh letter carrier comes,
delivers the item and that is surveiled
and then the police swoop in and they
say they have accepted the contraband.
They come in, they search the entire
home. And this happened recently to a
client of mine in California and the
amount of of contraband seized was
ridiculously small. was just absolutely
absurd. Um and it uh immediately brought
um law enforcement in the homes of these
people. They were threatened with, you
know, of course, weapons and and uh
cross-examined about everything they do
in their own home and forced to give up
information about their friends and uh
forced to go through the contents of
their cellular phone, open it up and
allow these DHS
Straightly speaking, it you don't need
to open your phone. Just remember that
you're not required to unlock your
phone. Call me. Um, but it it uh
it uh put me in a situation where on
behalf of another client who was
implicated by the statements of these
folks whose house was searched, we had
to reach out to DHS on their behalf and
tell them to not pull the same trick
with my my client, the client who had
not been searched. And uh because uh
why? Because like there is a privacy
protection act that is intended to
protect reporters. There is a religious
freedom restoration act that is intended
to pract protect the practitioners of
visionary religion.
It's the Religious Freedom Restoration
Act and it provides that you shall have
a defense to federal criminal charges of
importing or trafficking or
manufacturing or distributing under the
Controlled Substances Act. if you're a
sincere religious practitioner and this
is a practice that you engage in as part
of your religious free exercise, your
right of free exercise. And so I wrote a
letter to the Department of Homeland
Security agents and I copied 13 San
Francisco um Department of Justice
attorneys via email and I had it
delivered to each of them personally at
their Golden Gate office there in
downtown San Francisco advising them of
the existence of RFA. Good idea since
you know the ones who are searching
reporters houses don't know there's a
PPA. Well, you might as well tell the
ones who are chasing after visionary
religion practitioners that there is a
law applicable to that. And then I
provided some information showing that
indeed this contraband substance is used
for ceremonial purposes and therefore
you have to tell all this to the judge.
If you don't tell it to the judge, then
after you get your warrant, what'll do
we do? We'll move filing what's called a
Frank's motion under the federal rules
of criminal procedure. And the Frank's
motion will allow us to inform the
magistrate or the judge who issued the
search warrant that the government's
agents lied to them that they were in
bad faith that they either concealed
relevant facts or relevant law as the
attorneys did. In this case, the FBI
agent probably didn't have to do much
lying. It was the deception by the
attorneys and not telling the judge
about the Privacy Protection Act. And
that deception occurs routinely in all
of these drug interception cases. And
attorneys for visionary religion
practitioners need to know how to attack
unlawful search warrants just like the
Washington Post lawyers did here in
Nathansson's case and got a good result.
So, uh, thank you for listening and, uh,
please come back. um follow whatever
you're supposed to do to uh make this
podcast uh be a regular thing that you
do. Um please do that. And um we really
appreciate your visit and we'll see you
again
by Charles Carreon
2/25/26
Transcript
Good afternoon. It's February 25, 2026
and this is Charles Carreon and I am here
in Silver City, New Mexico to talk about
law and policy and uh visionary medicine
and uh search warrants and the
Department of Justice.
And uh let me uh start out by sharing my
screen with you here. Let's see the
screen.
Here we go. Done it last. All righty.
Federal judge rejects government's
request to search Washington Post
reporters devices.
And uh this pretty much tells a story uh
that uh federal judge rejected the
Department of Justice's demand to
continue its search of a Washington Post
reporter's phone and other electronic
devices for information that might help
an FBI investigation into the leaking of
classified information.
So, uh, this is another case of the, uh,
DOJ managing to
get in trouble with the federal judge
basically because, as we're going to
discover, they just don't care about
following the law and very likely really
just don't know what they're doing.
They're embroiled in ethical misconduct
everywhere. And the reason is pretty
simp. They have fired or seen most of
the smart lawyers at the DOJ league
because anyone smart is not going to
work in a
slave factory um where you're forced to
lie to judges and you don't even get to
have the dignity of being an honest
advocate. Um, it takes a stupid not
very, you know, intelligent person to
think that that's the right way to
conduct a law practice. And so that's
really all they've got left at the DOJ.
I mean, I'm sure there are some people
with brains and no ethics, but that's
kind of a rare combination actually.
Ethics leads to intelligent conduct and
intelligent conduct always suggests
ethical approaches. So, um, where are we
going to start out? Well, I'm going to
tell you, um, what happened here. I've
got some notes that I'm going to refer
to. What happened was, um, January 8th,
2026,
the Department of Justice
charged a man named Perez Lugones.
that's just his last name, Perez
Lugones, arrested him and charged him
with unlawful retention of defense
information. And then 4 days later on
January 12th, they went to the court and
they said they needed to search
Nathansson's house and seize all of her
devices.
And because there was information about
her communications with Mr. Perez
Lugones, why would she have
communications with him? because she has
assiduously cultivated informant
relationships on the um r/fed news
subreddit on Reddit and has actually
contacted 1,200 leakers
who are communicating with her or have
been communicating with her via signal.
And so apparently this is one person um
who is the government claims um has
leaked information to Miss Nathansson
who is a Washington Post reporter.
Um the judge denied the uh search
warrant because you know as usual the
Department of Justice doesn't really
have control of its case anymore. or
they just have to rush ahead and do
whatever the crazy man at the top of the
heap is shouting about today in his
orange rage. And um so the warrant is
rejected and the next day they try
again. They be in heavier people and
it's rejected again. Then the judge, the
magistrate judge, too kindly, altogether
too kindly, spends five hours going back
and forth with these guys and finally
issues a search warrant with very
specific limits to only information
about Mr. Pettis Lugonus's communication
from October 1, 2025 to the present. So
basically, what's up? It's about a
5-month period about one man. What do
they do? Well, they execute that search
warrant and um
they uh seize basically all of her
laptops, her phones, everything. Put her
completely out of business. All of her
sources go silent
and therefore Pam Bondi accomplished her
goal. She destroyed Miss Nathansson's
ability to communicate with,200
informants. They're not coming forth
anymore. So mission accomplished and
when you think that there's a victory
here well well there is but only to the
extent that we can start getting the
department of justice to behave justly
because that is not what it is about and
you know that I know that the uh
department of justice lawyers and are
then uh contacted by the Washington Post
lawyers they talk for six days DOJ guys
are never able to do a deal because they
don't have any authority. So, they can't
agree on anything. They refuse to hold
off on searching the materials any
further. Washington Post lawyers go to
the court and invoke uh a important
search warrant case from the fourth
circuit and get a standstill order and
apparently the government complies with
it. A standstill order meaning don't
look at anything.
So then the arguments are joined
and
what happens? Well, let's go ahead and
take a share of the article it of the uh
court ruling. Where is
it's not showing up. Maybe if I open it
in a tab that will probably doesn't want
to see it in Adobe. So sorry guys. Okay,
there we go. Now we should be able to
see it for you. Okay. So, share away
and
screen share. There we go. Okay, folks.
So, taking a look here at the screen
share. We've got
the basic facts that we just went
through. And now we'll go down to the
point where the judge starts blowing up
because it's worth giving it to him
verbatim.
These are all the facts that I just went
through.
And
here we go. And so then the judge goes
through the arguments of both parties.
The government of course says it can
keep everything and that their lawyers
can sort through anything it needs to be
sorted through. And of course the
Washington Post lawyers say no um you
just give it back to us and we'll comply
with this subpoena that you sent to the
Washington Post. And um so those are
basically the arguments that are posed.
And then of course there's the
alternative of having the judge go
through the files and not letting the
Department of Justice do it because they
can't be trusted. And ultimately uh you
know no suspense here. That's how the
judge rules. But um let's take a look at
this part before reaching the merits.
The court addresses a matter of
significant concern. the government's
failure to identify and analyze the
privacy protection act of 1980
in its search warrant application. Okay.
And so he says I had never received the
court had never received such an
application. In other words never
received a search warrant application to
uh search a reporter and was unaware of
the PPA. Okay. I just want to do a quick
little experiment and see how it goes if
we just go directly over to Chat GPT and
I'm going to share a different page with
you now. Just go over to chat and see
what happens. I haven't tried this. Um,
see what happens if we ask it. As a
federal law expert, please identify
any
statutes
that regulate
the DOJ's use of warrants
to seize
information
and property
from reporters,
journalists. Let's just uh Okay, let's
see what happens. Let's see if the judge
could have figured this out using chat
GP. There we go. It's working away. Yep,
there it is. Pops up right away.
Important statutes like the Privacy
Protection Act. Okay, so here the judge,
magistrate judge probably got himself.
He's got he's probably got three really
smart clerks, you know, them basic
stuff. So, uh there you go. uh just
assuming that a judge is going to
research the law just because it's
search warrant application. That's a big
assumption to make and apparently not a
safe one. So, uh let's go back to the
opinion because it's it's filled with
juicy stuff and go
back to the opinion. Yeah, you can learn
something by reading them. And what do I
want to learn here? Well, I want to
learn what they did that was so bad.
Okay. And what they did is right here.
The PPA, the Privacy Protection Act, is
directed at government lawyers in its
terms require the attorney general to
issue regulations. Oh, wow. They already
issued them. Look, they're here at 28.
Go to federal regulations. 50.1083.
Gee, you'd think they might know that.
and the Department of Justice Manual 913
for Oh gosh, just how can you help but
want to look that up, you know? Give me
a second here. So, let's find our
Justice Manual. Take a look at that. Oh,
look at this. Obtaining evidence. There
it is. It's right
in here. So, let's switch you over here
and let's take a look at it. Here we go.
See, they have a whole manual over at
the Department of Justice. Thing is,
they don't like to read it. And so what
did we learn? We're supposed to be
looking at 9-13400.
So that's not very hard to do. Here it
is. G whole code federal regulations and
justice department manual section.
obtaining information from or records of
members of the news media and
questioning, arresting or charging
members of the news media. The purpose
of these regulations is to strike the
proper balance between the public's
interest in the free dissemination of
ideas and information, the public's
interest in effective law enforcement,
and the fair administration of justice.
Under this policy, the department will
continue to limit the use of compulsory
legal process recognizing that
investigative techniques relating to
news gathering are an extraordinary
measure to be deployed as a last resort
once essential to a successful
investigation or prosecution. So let's
ask ourselves how they did in reaching
the balance. What did they do? They were
looking for information about one leaker
who had been criminally charged. So they
seized all of her computers, all of her
phones, all of her written work, and put
her completely out of business.
So it would seem to me that they got
that policy completely upside down. They
have caused huge harm to obtain a tiny
bit of evidentiary benefit in one case.
What we see here
is um as I said a lawless department of
justice that is bent upon
what they've already accomplished here
which is to silence leakers and to
intimidate the press so that they don't
pursue these kinds of stories. And it
didn't work. Um, the judge was quite
disturbed by it, who's quite upset by
the shenanigans they pulled. And I'm
going to take a look at another source
of info here for me. Get you some quotes
from the judge. They tell him, "Oh, we
we didn't we didn't know either." And
um, this judge says, "How could you miss
it? How could you think it didn't apply?
And how what effect did it have on the
case?" It judge said this omission this
failure to tell me about the privacy
protection act has seriously undermined
the court's confidence in the
government's disclosures. And the third
one the court finds that seizing the
totality of a reporter's electronic work
product
constitutes a restraint on the exercise
of first amendment rights
and nothing like a good cliche to uh
wrap up the analysis. the equivalent
letting the government um look through
the documents without any control over
that is the equivalent of leaving the
government's Fox in charge of the
Washington Post's hen house. So um the
uh judge was not pleased. It caused them
to lose this. This was called a 41G
motion under the rules of federal
criminal procedure and it allowed them
to dig into the honesty or dishonesty
um of the FBI agent who swore out the
affidavit. Now, I'm going to segue over
into a topic of my own interest, which
is visionary religion.
And um I'm going to discuss how the
visionary religion community suffers
from the same types of abuses that
Nathansson suffered in this case. Now
what happens in your average case that
involves a visionary religion
practitioner?
they um
usually um end up having their home
searched because they ordered some
vegetable substance from Peru or
Colombia, usually Peru. And it might be
Iawaska, it might contain a little bit
of DMT, it might be cocoa leaves. Um it
uh let's just say it's one of those. And
so both of those are scheduled
controlled substances. Um IA is contains
a controlled substance is
dimethylryptamine and therefore the
government considers it a controlled
substance even though Iaska itself isn't
on the list but DMT is. So what happens
is the government gets a search warrant.
The postal uh letter carrier comes,
delivers the item and that is surveiled
and then the police swoop in and they
say they have accepted the contraband.
They come in, they search the entire
home. And this happened recently to a
client of mine in California and the
amount of of contraband seized was
ridiculously small. was just absolutely
absurd. Um and it uh immediately brought
um law enforcement in the homes of these
people. They were threatened with, you
know, of course, weapons and and uh
cross-examined about everything they do
in their own home and forced to give up
information about their friends and uh
forced to go through the contents of
their cellular phone, open it up and
allow these DHS
Straightly speaking, it you don't need
to open your phone. Just remember that
you're not required to unlock your
phone. Call me. Um, but it it uh
it uh put me in a situation where on
behalf of another client who was
implicated by the statements of these
folks whose house was searched, we had
to reach out to DHS on their behalf and
tell them to not pull the same trick
with my my client, the client who had
not been searched. And uh because uh
why? Because like there is a privacy
protection act that is intended to
protect reporters. There is a religious
freedom restoration act that is intended
to pract protect the practitioners of
visionary religion.
It's the Religious Freedom Restoration
Act and it provides that you shall have
a defense to federal criminal charges of
importing or trafficking or
manufacturing or distributing under the
Controlled Substances Act. if you're a
sincere religious practitioner and this
is a practice that you engage in as part
of your religious free exercise, your
right of free exercise. And so I wrote a
letter to the Department of Homeland
Security agents and I copied 13 San
Francisco um Department of Justice
attorneys via email and I had it
delivered to each of them personally at
their Golden Gate office there in
downtown San Francisco advising them of
the existence of RFA. Good idea since
you know the ones who are searching
reporters houses don't know there's a
PPA. Well, you might as well tell the
ones who are chasing after visionary
religion practitioners that there is a
law applicable to that. And then I
provided some information showing that
indeed this contraband substance is used
for ceremonial purposes and therefore
you have to tell all this to the judge.
If you don't tell it to the judge, then
after you get your warrant, what'll do
we do? We'll move filing what's called a
Frank's motion under the federal rules
of criminal procedure. And the Frank's
motion will allow us to inform the
magistrate or the judge who issued the
search warrant that the government's
agents lied to them that they were in
bad faith that they either concealed
relevant facts or relevant law as the
attorneys did. In this case, the FBI
agent probably didn't have to do much
lying. It was the deception by the
attorneys and not telling the judge
about the Privacy Protection Act. And
that deception occurs routinely in all
of these drug interception cases. And
attorneys for visionary religion
practitioners need to know how to attack
unlawful search warrants just like the
Washington Post lawyers did here in
Nathansson's case and got a good result.
So, uh, thank you for listening and, uh,
please come back. um follow whatever
you're supposed to do to uh make this
podcast uh be a regular thing that you
do. Um please do that. And um we really
appreciate your visit and we'll see you
again