The ADC is suing DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin over the government’s seizure and attempted forensic search of Max Blumenthal’s phones after he returned from a reporting trip to Iran. The lawsuit accuses the government of not only violating his Fourth Amendment rights, but of retaliating against him for his journalism and constitutionally protected opinions.
Laura Loomer has boasted of lobbying top Trump officials to imprison Blumenthal, and effectively took credit for the seizure of his devices. Was federal law enforcement weaponized against the journalist due to pressure from an Israel-aligned smear merchant?
The following article was originally posted on the ADC’s website.
On February 18, 2026, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of journalist Max Blumenthal against Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Rodney S. Scott, and Acting CBP Deputy Commissioner Ronald D. Vitiello, challenging the government’s seizure and attempted forensic search of Blumenthal’s two cell phones after he returned from a reporting trip to Iran.
On July 10, Blumenthal returned to Dulles International Airport after traveling to Iran on a press visa to cover the funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, like many other journalists from the US and around the world.
At Dulles, CBP officers demanded his two smartphones and asked for his passcodes. Blumenthal declined, citing privacy concerns and the confidential journalistic material stored on the devices. An officer told him CBP would detain the phones and “hook [them] up to machines” to extract their data.
The lawsuit alleges that federal officials violated Blumenthal’s First Amendment rights through viewpoint discrimination and retaliation, and his Fourth Amendment rights by seizing his phones without a warrant or individualized suspicion and conducting or attempting an advanced forensic search. The complaint also alleges a violation of the Privacy Protection Act and challenges CBP’s January 2026 electronic-device search directive under the Administrative Procedure Act.
At the center of the case is a constitutional threat ADC has increasingly confronted across the country: Pro-Palestine speech and criticism of Israel are becoming testing grounds for government efforts to push beyond constitutional limits. ADC has made confronting this threat a central focus of its litigation against federal, state and local government actions that punish protected political speech.
“Advocacy for Palestinians and criticism of Israel has become a testing ground for how far government officials can go in eroding Americans’ constitutional rights, and is increasingly used to justify investigations, punishment and government interference with protected speech and other civil liberties,” said ADC President and Legal Director Jenin Younes.
“In Max’s case, Laura Loomer, a close ally of President Trump, called for Max to be arrested while he was still abroad because of his journalism and viewpoints. Loomer boasted about reporting Max to federal authorities, and effectively took credit for the seizure of his phones. Given Loomer’s well-documented influence over President Trump, there is a strong likelihood that her targeting led to the unlawful search and seizure. The government cannot allow politically connected individuals to weaponize law enforcement against journalists because they object to what those journalists report,” Younes concluded.
“The Constitution protects individuals from government attacks on our indispensable individual rights, especially free speech,” said co-counsel George Doumar. “That’s what makes America a sacred and special place, and that’s what this case seeks to uphold.”
“I was hardly the only American citizen reporting from Iran during Khamenei’s funeral. Yet I was the only one I know of who had their devices seized by federal agents upon their return home,” stated the plaintiff, Max Blumenthal. “It is evident to me why I was singled out. The extremely intimate, Israel-aligned Trump allies who demanded that I be punished by the US government for reporting from Iran could not demonstrate that I’d broken any laws, so they based their case instead on my views and journalistic record. I’m bringing this lawsuit to assert my rights against a malign campaign of political retaliation and to protect other journalists from future violations.”
ADC first went to court last month on an emergency motion seeking the return of Blumenthal’s phones and any data extracted from them. Although the government returned the phones the day after the motion was filed, the case is still live, as the court in the Eastern District of Virginia agreed with Blumenthal that the government had failed to adequately demonstrate that it hadn’t retrieved any information from the phones.
However, the motion does not provide for a court to grant declaratory and injunctive relief. Because the government has not renounced its unconstitutional conduct, Blumenthal has every reason to anticipate and fear that he will be subjected to a similar, unlawful search in the future. Accordingly, this lawsuit is needed to safeguard his rights going forward. And because he is asking the court to enjoin the unlawful CBP directive allowing warrantless forensic searches of phones without any individualized suspicion, it ultimately seeks to uphold the constitutional rights of all Americans.
ADC will continue challenging unconstitutional government actions that use criticism of Israel or advocacy for Palestinian rights as a basis for weakening Americans’ civil liberties and constitutional protections. Political dissent does not lose its protection because powerful people object to it.
The case is Blumenthal v. Mullin, et al., Case No. 1:26-mc-16 (LMB/WEF), in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
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