The F.B.I. began investigating a New York Times reporter last month after she wrote about the bureau’s director, Kash Patel, using bureau personnel to provide his girlfriend with government security and transportation, according to a person briefed on the matter.
Agents interviewed the girlfriend, queried databases for information on the reporter, Elizabeth Williamson, and recommended moving forward to determine whether Ms. Williamson broke federal stalking laws, the person said.
Those actions prompted concerns among some Justice Department officials who saw the inquiry as retaliation for an article that Mr. Patel and his girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins, did not like, and who determined there was no legal basis to proceed with the investigation, according to the person briefed on the matter.
In response to questions from The Times this week, the F.B.I. said that “while investigators were concerned about how the aggressive reporting techniques crossed lines of stalking,” the F.B.I. is not pursuing a case.
The scrutiny of Ms. Williamson is an example of the Trump administration examining whether to criminalize routine news gathering practices that are widely considered protected by the First Amendment.
Journalists are more often caught up in criminal investigations as potential witnesses when the authorities are trying to determine who leaked them classified information.
In preparing the article about Mr. Patel and Ms. Wilkins, Ms. Williamson followed normal procedures for a journalist working on a story, which typically involve reaching out to the subject and seeking a variety of perspectives. In this case, Ms. Williamson contacted numerous people who had worked with or knew Ms. Wilkins.
Ms. Williamson had one phone call at the beginning of her reporting process with Ms. Wilkins — Ms. Wilkins insisted that it be off the record — and exchanged emails with her before publication of the article. At that early stage in her reporting, Ms. Williamson asked Ms. Wilkins to provide a list of people she might speak to for the article, but Ms. Wilkins did not respond.
Ms. Williamson was never in Ms. Wilkins’s presence.
Joseph Kahn, the executive editor of The Times, criticized the bureau for investigating a reporter for doing her job.
“The F.B.I.’s attempt to criminalize routine reporting is a blatant violation of Elizabeth’s First Amendment rights and another attempt by this administration to prevent journalists from scrutinizing its actions,” Mr. Kahn said. “It’s alarming. It’s unconstitutional. And it’s wrong.”
The Times article, published Feb. 28, described how Ms. Wilkins has a full-time protective detail of Special Weapons and Tactics team members drawn from F.B.I. field offices around the country to accompany her to engagements including singing appearances and a hair appointment.
The disclosure intensified questions over Mr. Patel’s use of taxpayer-funded resources for personal use, not long after he drew headlines for celebrating in Milan with the U.S. men’s hockey team after its gold medal victory in the Olympics.
In a statement provided for the Feb. 28 article, a spokesman for the F.B.I. said that active death threats against Ms. Wilkins warranted the level of protection she was receiving, but he did not question the accuracy of Ms. Williamson’s reporting.
The inquiry into Ms. Williamson played out in the days and weeks following publication of the article.
On the day of the article’s publication, Ms. Wilkins received a threatening email from an anonymous sender. Ms. Wilkins forwarded the email the same day to the F.B.I., according to an affidavit later filed in a criminal prosecution of the alleged sender of the email, who was in Boston. According to the affidavit, the sender acknowledged emailing the threat after reading the article by Ms. Williamson.
Several days later, the F.B.I. interviewed Ms. Wilkins, who told them how the reporting Ms. Williamson had done for the article had left her unnerved and feeling harassed, according to the person familiar with the matter. Ms. Wilkins had raised similar concerns with the F.B.I. as early as January, when Ms. Williamson first contacted her, the person said.
A lawyer for Ms. Wilkins also wrote to editors of The Times before the article’s publication, saying that extensive reporting by Ms. Williamson “raises troubling questions about proportionality and journalistic purpose.”
Following the interview with Ms. Wilkins, the F.B.I. combed through the bureau’s databases to determine whether the federal government had any information on Ms. Williamson to help make the argument that she deserved further scrutiny, according to the person familiar with the matter.
The F.B.I. cited statutes dealing with stalking and with targeting someone with threats to their safety and reputation to justify investigating Ms. Williamson, the person said.
After that initial stage of inquiry, F.B.I. agents recommended moving forward with a preliminary investigation, the person said. At that point, the F.B.I. appears to have run into obstacles at the Justice Department, where officials determined there was no legal basis to proceed, according to the person briefed on the matter.
Neither The Times nor Ms. Williamson was informed of the steps taken by the F.B.I. to look into her and her reporting. Ms. Williamson declined to comment.
Asked about the sequence of events, a spokesman for the F.B.I. said it was “false” that the bureau had ever investigated Ms. Williamson. He said the inquiries were spurred by the threat Ms. Wilkins had received after the publication of the Feb. 28 article.
“Ms. Wilkins was interviewed by F.B.I. agents in relation to a death threat in Boston, which specifically referenced an article published by Williamson the previous day,” the spokesman said in an emailed reply. “During this questioning, the agents inquired about the related reporting. While investigators were concerned about how the aggressive reporting techniques crossed lines of stalking, no further action regarding Williamson or the reporting was ever pursued by the F.B.I.”
The spokesman did not respond to questions about whether Mr. Patel was aware of the inquiry into Ms. Williamson or whether he condoned the use of government resources to examine routine news gathering activities by a reporter.
In social media posts in January, before the article was published, and in April, as The Times continued to report on Mr. Patel’s use of government resources, Ms. Wilkins accused Ms. Williamson of stalking her, calling her out for conduct that is considered routine for reporting.
A supervisory agent at the F.B.I.’s headquarters in Washington who oversees violent crime investigations was involved in the early stages of the inquiry into Ms. Williamson, according to the person familiar with the matter.
The involvement of the bureau’s headquarters is notable. Dating back to the investigations of Hillary Clinton and her use of a private email server and Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia, Mr. Trump’s allies have contended that the involvement of F.B.I. officials in Washington, rather than employees from field offices, allows for political influence.
Mr. Trump’s hostility toward journalists is a hallmark of his time in office, and Mr. Patel shares his adversarial stance. Before becoming F.B.I. director, Mr. Patel equated journalists to the “most powerful enemy that the United States has ever seen” in a 2024 speech.
In January, the F.B.I. searched the Virginia home of Hannah Natanson, a Washington Post reporter, in connection with an investigation into a government contractor’s handling of classified material. It is exceptionally rare for the authorities to search reporters’ homes as part of such an investigation when they are not the focus of the investigation.
In April, after news organizations reported details about the downing of a U.S. fighter jet in Iran, Mr. Trump promised to go after an unnamed outlet over its coverage. Early last year, the White House punished The Associated Press over its refusal to comply with an executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico, curtailing its access to press events.
Mr. Trump is suing The Times and three of its journalists for defamation, saying that a series of articles during the 2024 campaign were intended to damage his candidacy and undercut his reputation as a businessman.
The Times sued the Pentagon in December, accusing the administration of infringing on the constitutional rights of journalists by imposing a set of restrictions on reporting about the military. A federal judge in March ruled that the limits violated the First Amendment and ordered that parts of the administration’s policy be tossed. The legal battle in that case continues.
Erik Wemple and Charlie Savage contributed reporting.
