The Justice Department has still not filed a Fourth Circuit notice of appeal in the Hannah Natanson matter. The deadline window opened the day Magistrate Judge William Porter ruled against the government on February 24, ordering the return of materials seized from the Washington Post reporter's devices. As of Tuesday morning, the docket carries no filing. [1]

The paper's Monday account of Markey-Moulton's five-day silence and the fifteenth week of the Natanson inquiry framed the absence as bounded negative evidence — what the institution has not done, recorded against what it might have done. Tuesday extends the bound by one more day. The DOJ's April 9 Eastern District of Virginia brief is the last substantive filing the public can read. [2]

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has continued litigating around the silence. Its newer FOIA suit, filed May 13 in the District of Columbia, seeks the underlying records on the raid itself — the affidavits, the approvals, the chain that authorized agents to seize a reporter's phones in November. [1] On X, RCFP framed the FOIA filing as a response to the DOJ's failure to produce records voluntarily.

What remains absent is the appellate vehicle that would let the government test Porter's ruling on the merits. Until that paper exists, the order stands and the materials Porter ordered returned are, by court instruction, to be returned. The paper will mark the next business day.

-- ANNA WEBER, Berlin