Exactly. The search warrant could have been served administratively. The officers weren’t just armed. They had guns drawn. It’s a bad look if nothing else.
Sending people to "administratively" steal all of her phones, computers, records, and storage devices for publishing the truth when the state wants only lies published instead is the real story here. Whether they do it with firearms or not is mostly irrelevant.
This is a story about government censorship, a 1A issue.
The government's power to issue search warrants should be pretty significantly scaled back in general, and its power to do anything in the absence of one should be severely restricted to zero.
Why were the police breaking into her house to steal her publishing tools in the first place?
Why was there a search warrant?
Why did the prosecutor seek one?
Two more and you get to the real problem.
Hint: it had nothing to do with "unauthorized access", or whatever.
Yes, the confiscation in itself is an attack on free speech rights.
But don’t think the high-stress weapons-drawn raid against a prominent whistleblower isn’t meant to send its own message clear and loud: keep your heads down or you could be next. Especially when combined with the twitchy trigger finger that US law enforcers are reputed to possess.
This is only a couple steps up from a banana republic death squad. And that too is no accident.