By Devan Cole, CNN

(CNN) — The Justice Department may not search through the contents of several devices investigators seized from a Washington Post reporter earlier this year as part of a probe into leaked classified documents, a federal judge in Virginia ruled Tuesday.

The decision from Magistrate Judge William Porter is a remarkable turn of events some six weeks after he first gave the government permission to raid the reporter’s home to seize a phone, two computers and a Garmin watch.

In a 22-page ruling laying bare the judge’s concerns that investigators would use the search warrant he approved to peer into parts of the reporter’s data that are unrelated to the leak investigation, Porter said that giving them carte blanche to rummage through all of the data it seized “when probable cause exists for only a narrow subset … would authorize an unlawful general warrant.”

“Given the documented reporting on government leak investigations and the government’s well-chronicled efforts to stop them, allowing the government’s filter team to search a reporter’s work product — most of which consists of unrelated information from confidential sources — is the equivalent of leaving the government’s fox in charge of the Washington Post’s henhouse,” he wrote.

Porter rejected separate requests from the reporter, Hannah Natanson, and prosecutors to look through the devices and filter out information that is not subject to the search warrant, instead tasking the court with that responsibility.

“To gather the information the government needs to prosecute its criminal case without authorizing an unrestrained search … the court will conduct the review itself,” he wrote.

CNN has previously reported that Natanson is not under investigation. But her communications with a government contractor who was charged with illegally leaking classified information are what led prosecutors to ask Porter to approve a search warrant for her Virginia home earlier this year.

The contractor, Aurelio Luis Perez-Lugones, pleaded not guilty late last month to five counts of unlawfully transmitting national defense information to Natanson through an encrypted messaging application and a single count of unlawfully retaining the defense information.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

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By Casey Tolan, Isabelle Chapman, CNN

(CNN) — Dozens of FBI witness interviews from the investigation of Jeffrey Epstein appear to be missing from the massive trove of files released by the Department of Justice last month, according to a CNN review – including three interviews related to a woman who accused President Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her decades ago.

An evidence log provided to attorneys for Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell includes serial numbers for about 325 FBI witness interview records – but more than 90 of those records, over a quarter of the list, don’t appear to be present on the DOJ website, according to CNN’s review.

Among those missing records are three interviews related to a woman who told agents that Epstein had repeatedly abused her starting when she was approximately 13 years old, and who also accused Trump of sexually assaulting her.

A Democratic lawmaker on Tuesday pointed to the apparently missing documents to question the extent of DOJ’s release and whether the Trump administration followed the law mandating the agency publish its files related to Epstein, the wealthy financier who died in a federal jail in 2019 while facing sex trafficking charges.

“We have a survivor that made serious allegations against the president,” Rep. Robert Garcia, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, told CNN. “But there’s a series of documents, and it would appear to be possible interviews, that the FBI conducted with the survivor that are actually missing, that we don’t have access to.”

Trump has consistently denied wrongdoing in connection with Epstein. In a statement, the White House called the allegations against Trump “false and sensationalist” and pointed to a previous DOJ statement that “some of the documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims against President Trump.”

Details about the missing documents related to the Trump accuser were previously reported by NPR and independent journalist Roger Sollenberger.

A DOJ spokesperson denied that any Epstein records had been deleted and stressed that the department was following the law.

“We have not deleted anything, and as we have always said, all documents responsive were produced,” the spokesperson said. Documents not included in the release were either “duplicates, privileged, (or) part of an ongoing federal investigation,” the spokesperson said. They did not answer follow-up questions about specific files.

It’s possible that some of the documents referred to in the Maxwell evidence logs could be present elsewhere in the files without the serial numbers listed on the logs, or with those serial numbers redacted.

Many documents have also been removed and added back to the DOJ’s Epstein files website over the weeks since the initial release. Last week, CNN’s analysis found that about a dozen additional interview reports were also missing, but those were available online as of Tuesday afternoon. One of the two evidence logs was also offline last week but is now accessible again. The DOJ spokesperson said that it was “temporarily removed for victim redactions.”

Several Epstein victims have said that they’ve scoured the DOJ’s website in recent weeks for files documenting their own interviews with the FBI – only to come up empty handed.

“All of us have been looking for our victim statements,” Jess Michaels, who was assaulted by Epstein when she was 22 years old, told CNN after the file release. Heavily redacted and missing interview reports suggest that “this Department of Justice is actually

By Katherine Koretski, CNN

(CNN) — It started as a viral snowball fight in a historic blizzard. It ended up putting New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani on the opposite side of his city’s police, creating a politically sensitive moment early in his tenure.

Speaking at a news conference that largely dealt with how New York fared during the severe snowstorm that hit the Northeast this week, Mamdani faced several questions about the fight and the injuries suffered by two officers pelted with snowballs.

“From videos I’ve seen, it looks like a snowball fight,” Mamdani said, adding that two officers involved were “facing lacerations on their face.”

Asked whether he thought anyone involved in the incident should be charged with assaulting a police officer if the throwers were to be identified, Mamdani said: “I don’t.”

In a separate post on X, he called on New Yorkers to treat officers with respect but joked that “if anyone’s catching a snowball, it’s me.”

Mamdani’s initial lighthearted tone contrasted with other key officials. By day’s end, he was being accused by the city’s Police Benevolent Association of a “failure of leadership” and fueling longtime detractors who brought up his past criticisms of law enforcement.

“This was not just a ‘snowball fight,’” the PBA said in a statement. “This was an assault — by adults throwing chunks of ice and rocks — that landed two police officers in the hospital with head and face injuries.”

Hours after the mayor’s news conference, the New York Police Department posted on its social media seeking tips for two suspects “Wanted for ASSAULT ON A POLICE OFFICER.” The NYPD said “two uniformed police officers were inside Washington Square Park when two individuals intentionally struck the officers multiple times with snow and ice causing injury to their head, neck, and face.”

Mamdani’s press team referred to his earlier comments when asked by CNN about the NYPD’s tweet.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Mamdani ally, also weighed in, saying, “Our NYPD officers put themselves on the line to protect us every day. It is never acceptable to throw anything at a police officer, full stop.”

And Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, whom Mamdani retained from the prior administration, described the videos of the encounter during the snowball fight as “showing individuals attacking cops.”

“I want to be very clear: The behavior depicted is disgraceful, and it is criminal. Our detectives are investigating this matter,” Tisch said in a social media post.

In one video, a crowd is heard jeering the officers and throwing snowballs at them as they are walking. One officer is seen shoving at least two people to the ground as snowballs continue to be thrown.

Footage also shows officers being followed and continuing to be pelted by snow as they walked to their police van.

The video doesn’t show what happened before the snowballs were thrown. The incident occurred during a planned meetup for a snowball fight in the park, according to a flyer shared on social media.

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