The U.S. Justice Department is pressuring some British journalists to cooperate with the prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is accused of publishing classified U.S. military documents leaked to him by a whistleblower.

The DOJ and the FBI are using ‘vague threats and pressure tactics’ in their efforts to receive journalists’ help in building their case against Assange, according to Rolling Stones’ James Ball, who said he is among the journalists being pressured to cooperate. Ball is sought by the DOJ as someone who had briefly worked and lived with Assange, and was a whistleblower revealing what he described as ‘WikiLeaks’ own ethical lapses.’

The first attempt at receiving Ball’s cooperation in Assange’s prosecution came through London’s Metropolitan Police in December 2021, he wrote. He remained silent at the time, on the advice of counsel, but has since learned that more journalists have had police show up at their doorsteps in the last month. Former Guardian investigations editor David Leigh, transparency campaigner Heather Brooke and writer Andrew O’Hagan have all been approached by police.

Assange is facing an uphill legal battle over his potential extradition from London, where he has been held at the high-security Belmarsh Prison, to the U.S. over Wikileaks’ 2010 publication of top secret cables detailing war crimes committed by the U.S. government in the Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, detention camp, Iraq and Afghanistan. The materials, which were leaked to him by then-U.S. soldier Chelsea Manning, expose instances of the CIA engaging in torture and rendition. Wikileaks also published a video showing the U.S. military gunning down civilians in Iraq, including two Reuters journalists.

The Australian journalist would face 17 charges for receiving, possessing and communicating classified information to the public under the espionage act and one charge alleging a conspiracy to commit computer intrusion if he is extradited to the U.S., and could be sentenced to as many as 175 years in an American maximum security prison. Manning was convicted by the Obama administration’s DOJ in 2013 of violations of the Espionage Act and other offenses over the Cablegate leak.

Assange has been held at Belmarsh Prison since he was removed from the Ecuadorian Embassy four years ago for breaching jail conditions. He had sought asylum at the embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden over allegations he raped two women because Sweden would not promise him protection from extradition to the U.S. The investigations into the sexual assault allegations were eventually dropped.

Ball was first contacted about helping in the Assange case by a Metropolitan Police officer on the special investigations team, who had called him on a blocked number Ball failed to answer. He then received a ‘deliberately innocuous’ email from the police.

‘James, I would like to meet with you to ask if you would be willing to participate in a voluntary witness interview,’ the officer wrote. ‘You are not under investigation for anything. It is a delicate matter that I am only able to discuss with you face to face.’

A lawyer spoke to police on Ball’s behalf and learned that U.S. and U.K. authorities were asking him to testify about a story he wrote on Assange’s relationship with Israel Shamir, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ball wrote, adding that, without his testimony, the ‘U.S. government cannot make much use of what I revealed in the article in a court of law.’

Ball said he was ‘more than willing’ to write about his relationship with Assange in the media, but he does not believe ‘it should be used to help a vindictive prosecution of Assange.’

An officer told Ball’s lawyer that U.S. intelligence agencies claimed to have discovered that ”James Ball’ doesn’t exist,’ which Ball said was a false accusation as the name is his actual birth name that has never changed. After seeking further legal advice, Ball was told by multiple attorneys not to travel to the U.S. or speak out publicly over concerns about potential prosecution for his refusal to cooperate.

‘That uneasy truce has come to an end,’ Ball wrote. ‘As a journalist, I need to be able to travel to the U.S. to work, and I am doing so this week. Also, other journalists are now being contacted in relation to the case. Both together make continued silence impossible.’

Ball said the two years he avoided traveling to the U.S. on legal advice has ‘stifled stories I would otherwise have written for U.S. outlets. I had a real and credible fear of prosecution.’

Last year, the editors and publishers of U.S. and European news outlets that worked with Assange on the publication of excerpts from more than 250,000 documents he obtained in the Cablegate leak — The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde, Der Spiegel and El País  — wrote an open letter calling for the U.S. to end its prosecution of Assange.

The Obama administration elected against indicting Assange after Wikileaks published the cables in 2010 because it would have had to give the same treatment to journalists from other major news outlets that worked with Assange on the documents. But former President Trump’s DOJ later moved to indict Assange under the Espionage Act, and the Biden administration has continued to pursue his prosecution.

‘If President Biden wants his Department of Justice to reverse the decision of the Obama DOJ on prosecuting Assange for his 2010 actions, he should at least explain it, and say why it is worth the silencing effect it is having on mainstream journalism,’ Ball wrote.

‘As it stands, Biden’s DOJ is threatening the U.S. media’s First Amendment rights, even as it claims to be standing up to a Supreme Court that is threatening many other rights. The hypocrisy should not stand,’ he continued.

Assange’s case has received the attention of some lawmakers on Capitol Hill, with Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., leading a letter to the DOJ demanding the charges against him be dropped. Lawmakers in Australia and other countries have also pushed the U.S. to end its prosecution of Assange. Pope Francis recently met with Assange’s wife, Stella, who said the Pope expressed support for her family’s situation and concern about Assange’s suffering.

The Trump administration CIA reportedly had plans to kill Assange over the publication of sensitive agency hacking tools known as ‘Vault 7,’ which the agency said represented ‘the largest data loss in CIA history,’ according to a 2021 Yahoo report. The agency had discussions ‘at the highest levels’ of the administration about plans to assassinate Assange in London. Acting on orders from then-CIA director Mike Pompeo, the agency had also drawn up kill ‘sketches’ and ‘options.’

The CIA had advanced plans to kidnap and rendition Assange and had made a political decision to charge him, according to the report.

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White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s claim that no members of the Biden family were present at the White House in the days leading to the discovery of a bag of cocaine in the West Wing has been contradicted by the Fox News press pool report on one of those very days.

According to the Friday, June 30 pool report, Biden gave remarks in the Roosevelt Room that afternoon, and didn’t depart the White House for Camp David until 6:34 p.m., along with First Lady Jill Biden, Hunter Biden, and Hunter’s son Beau Biden.

However, Jean-Pierre claimed Friday while angrily responding to a reporter’s question about whether the cocaine belonged to a member of the Biden family that they weren’t present at the White House on that day.

‘They were not here Friday. They were not here Saturday. They were not here Sunday. They were not even here Monday. They came back on Tuesday. So to ask that question is actually incredibly irresponsible. And I’ll just leave it there,’ she said.

The White House did not immediately respond to Fox’s request for comment.

The illicit drugs were discovered by a member of the Secret Service on Sunday evening near the West Executive entrance, and have prompted questions from the press over who might have brought them into the White House.

One source told Fox News Digital on Thursday that the Secret Service still didn’t have any suspects in the investigation surrounding the cocaine, and that it wasn’t clear if the culprit would ever be found.

Fox News’ Andrew Mark Miller and Mark Meredith contributed to this report.

EXCLUSIVE: Military records obtained by a conservative watchdog show U.S. Air Force Academy instructional materials that include presentations addressing Critical Race Theory (CRT), White privilege and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.

The group, Judicial Watch, announced Friday it had obtained 478 pages of records through a November 2022 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit it filed after the Department of Defense (DOD) didn’t respond to its request for Air Force Academy training materials pertaining to CRT.

The records include one particular PowerPoint presentation about ‘Prejudice and Racism,’ and addresses things like interracial relationships and White Americans’ attitudes toward the Democratic and Republican parties through a racial lense.

Judicial Watch pointed to one particular bullet point in the presentation that stated, ‘Opposition to interracial dating correlated with white partisanship after [President] Obama’s election despite being unrelated to party identification in previous decades.’

It also noted the presentation included a set of tables with the headline, ‘White Americans’ Support for Democratic Candidates for President as a Function of Old-Fashioned Racism,’ and another slide with tables showing, ‘Correlations between Republican Party Identification and Old-Fashioned Racism among White Americans.’

Another highlighted slide was one titled, ‘Radicalization of Public Policy,’ which included a bullet point stating, ‘They [pollsters] found that the image of a black man greatly impacted responses among Trump supporters.’

A bullet point in the same slide said those surveyed supporters of former President Donald Trump ‘were less supportive of housing assistance programs,’ ‘expressed higher levels of anger that some people receive government assistance,’ and ‘were more likely to say that individuals who receive assistance are to blame for their economic situation’ after being ‘exposed to the black racial cue.’

Other slides discussed subjects like ‘White identity,’ and the ‘effects’ it has on non-White people, ‘support for voter ID laws,’ and ‘support for political violence.’

The records also included a ‘CRT Talking Points’ document that claimed the phrase ‘white supremacy’ leads to ‘defensive’ feelings, but is the ‘academically correct way to talk about most of American history.’

A separate presentation appeared to promote BLM by including a depiction of a White police officer holding a sign pointing to a Black man that asked, ‘Is his life worth less than mine?’ Another image showed a White woman holding a similar sign toward a Black woman. Other slides depicted alleged police brutality towards Black Americans.

A number of additional materials obtained by Judicial Watch included in the records reiterated the same topics in various presentations, slides and communications among DOD staff members.

Fox News Digital reached out to the Pentagon and the Air Force for comment but did not immediately receive responses.

President Biden praised the completion of the process to destroy the United States’ chemical weapons stockpile in a statement on Friday.

Biden announced on Friday that the U.S. destroyed the final munition in the country’s chemical weapons stockpile.

‘For more than 30 years, the United States has worked tirelessly to eliminate our chemical weapons stockpile. Today, I am proud to announce that the United States has safely destroyed the final munition in that stockpile—bringing us one step closer to a world free from the horrors of chemical weapons,’ Biden said. 

‘Successive administrations have determined that these weapons should never again be developed or deployed, and this accomplishment not only makes good on our long-standing commitment under the Chemical Weapons Convention, it marks the first time an international body has verified destruction of an entire category of declared weapons of mass destruction. I am grateful to the thousands of Americans who gave their time and talents to this noble and challenging mission for more than three decades.’

The U.S. was under a Sept. 30 deadline to get rid of its remaining chemical weapons under the international Chemical Weapons Convention, which went into place in 1997 and is joined by 193 countries.

Most recently, 51,000 M55 rockets which have GB nerve agent, also known as sarin, were destroyed in Kentucky. The chemicals were stored in Kentucky since the 1940s.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, sarin is ‘one of the most toxic of the known chemical warfare agents.’

‘Exposure to sarin can cause death in minutes. A fraction of an ounce (1 to 10 mL) of sarin on the skin can be fatal. Nerve agents are chemically similar to organophosphate pesticides and exert their effects by interfering with the normal function of the nervous system,’ the CDC states.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a statement that ‘Chemical weapons are responsible for some of the most horrific episodes of human loss.’

‘Though the use of these deadly agents will always be a stain on history, today our nation has finally fulfilled our promise to rid our arsenal of this evil,’ he said.

Chemical weapon usage began in World War I and are responsible for the estimated deaths of at least 100,000 people.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Republican Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach sued in state court Friday to mandate biological sex be listed on driver’s licenses and be immalleable to requests for changes by transgender motorists.Kobach argues that Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly — to whom he lost his bid for the governorship to in 2018 — is allowing state agencies to violate a recently-enacted law by letting sex changes be recognized on licenses. The law Kobach cites in the suit officially defines sex as immutable and designated by the ‘biological reproductive system’ identified at birth.

The Republican attorney general of Kansas sued in state court Friday to block transgender residents from changing their sex on their driver’s licenses and to rebuke the Democratic governor for defying his interpretation of a new law.

Attorney General Kris Kobach is seeking an order to stop Gov. Laura Kelly, and agencies under her control, from allowing the changes to transgender people’s licenses. Kobach contends a law that took effect Saturday prevents such changes and requires the state to reverse any previous changes in its records.

Kobach has argued that the law applies in the same way to birth certificates, but the lawsuit filed Friday doesn’t address those documents. The settlement of a 2018 federal lawsuit requires Kansas to allow transgender people to change their birth certificates.

More than 900 people have changed the listing for sex on their birth certificates in the past four years. About 400 have changed their driver’s licenses in that period, about four times as many a month this year as previously. The number of driver’s licenses changes accelerated in May and June as LGBTQ+ rights advocates encouraged people to do it ahead of the new law.

That new law defines a person’s sex as male or female, based on the ‘biological reproductive system’ identified at birth, applying that definition to any state law or regulation. It also says that ‘important governmental objectives’ of protecting people’s privacy, health and safety justify single-sex spaces such as bathrooms and locker rooms. Kansas is among at least 10 states with a law against transgender people using facilities in line with their gender identities, though the new law includes no enforcement mechanism.

Kobach’s lawsuit seeks to force the governor to enforce the law as he sees it. It names as defendants two officials who oversee driver’s licenses.

While Kelly isn’t named as a defendant, the lawsuit holds her responsible for the policy on driver’s licenses. It quotes John Adams, the nation’s second president, and cites the Declaration of Independence in arguing that Kelly ‘does not possess the power that English monarchs claimed’ centuries ago.

‘The Governor cannot pick and choose which laws she will enforce and which laws she will ignore,’ part of the lawsuit reads.

Kelly’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

It isn’t clear how quickly the district court in Shawnee County, home to the state capital, Topeka, could deal with the case.

The governor’s office said last week that the state health department, which handles birth certificates, and the motor vehicle division, which issues driver’s licenses, would continue allowing transgender people to change the markers for sex on those documents. Her office said lawyers in her administration had concluded that doing so doesn’t violate the new law. Kelly is a strong supporter of LGBTQ+ rights and vetoed the measure, but the Republican-controlled Legislature overrode her.

The new Kansas law was among a raft of measures rolling back transgender rights enacted this year in statehouses across the U.S. But only a few states do not allow transgender people to change their birth certificates. Federal judges last month upheld policies in Oklahoma and Tennessee, and a no-changes rule in Montana is expected to face a legal challenge.

Kelly won her first term as governor in 2018 by defeating Kobach, then the Kansas secretary of state. He staged a political comeback last year by winning the attorney general’s race as she captured a second term, both of them by slim margins.

The governor’s statements about the new law are at odds with descriptions from LGBTQ+ rights advocates before the Republican-controlled Legislature enacted it over Kelly’s veto. The advocates predicted that it would prevent transgender people from changing their driver’s licenses and amounted to a legal ‘erasure’ of their identities, something Kobach confirmed as the intent when he issued his legal opinion.

‘For me to go into a bathroom and not have a marker that represents who I am, I was terrified. I was afraid I was going to get accosted or harassed,’ said Ty Goeke, a 37-year-old transgender Topeka resident who changed both his birth certificate and driver’s license last month.

Goeke participated in a transgender rights rally last week with his wife, Mallory, who carried a sign made from a toilet seat, calling for the new law to be ‘flushed.’ Ty Goeke said he sobbed with joy in a state health department office when he changed his birth certificate.

‘Now that I have the correct marker, I feel much better, feel more confident,’ he said. ‘I feel at ease with myself.’

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Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., is calling for President Biden and White House staff members to take a drug test after a bag of cocaine was found inside the executive mansion over the holiday weekend.

‘So let me get this straight, the White House is refusing to say whether the cocaine culprit will be arrested,’ Boebert questioned in a tweet on Thursday.

‘Well, I think we should drug test EVERYONE, including Joe Biden, until we know who smuggled illegal drugs into the White House,’ she said.

On Wednesday, the Secret Service confirmed to Fox News that the substance found in a bag in the West Wing of the White House by a member of the Secret Service on Sunday evening was cocaine. The discovery prompted the response of a hazmat team and the fire department while the Secret Service blocked the streets around the White House.

It was originally reported that Secret Service discovered the illegal drug in a common area of the West Wing, but it has since been confirmed that the cocaine was actually found in a more secure location near an entrance used by various staff members from different government agencies. The place where the drug was found is also near the Situation Room — a conference room and intelligence-management center located in the basement of the West Wing.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the law enforcement agency was still investigating while fielding questions about the culprit.

Allies of the Biden administration fumed at reports after the cocaine was found in the White House.

‘It’s all political fodder right now, political bull s***,’ an anonymous source close to the White House told The Hill. The insider scoffed that the story was predictably being leveraged by the right, after former President Trump claimed the illegal drug belong to President Biden and his son Hunter.

‘I think it’s comical. Of course, you’re going to do what you need to do. Any time the opposition has a way to lean in and provide some type of antidote or response that’s going to get people wired up — they’re going to do so,’ the source added.

While President Biden and his family were at Camp David over the July 4th weekend, White House officials refused to deny Trump’s claims during Thursday’s press gaggle.

White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates invoked the Hatch Act to dodge the question. ‘I don’t have a response to that, because we have to be careful about the Hatch Act,’ Bates said to a reporter.

The legislation prohibits federal employees from talking about or using federal resources for campaign purposes.

The Secret Service on Thursday still had no suspects in the investigation into who brought the illegal drug into the White House, and it’s not clear whether a culprit will ever be found, a source told Fox News Digital.

The source, who is familiar with the Secret Service probe, told Fox News Digital that it will take time to review the evidence and said that officials admitted there is a possibility they will not be able to determine who brought the drugs into the building.

The source added that multiple tests have been run on the cocaine container, including DNA and fingerprints tests.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., wrote to the Secret Service on Wednesday to demand more information on the finding. 

‘If the White House complex is not secure, Congress needs to know the details, as well as your plan to correct any security flaws,’ he wrote. 

Fox News’ Kristine Parks, Andrew Mark Miller, and Houston Keene contributed to this report.

A two-year spending plan that would cut income taxes, increase funding for K-12 schools and cut the University of Wisconsin’s budget in a fight over diversity, equity and inclusion programming is up for final legislative approval on Thursday.

Once the Republican-controlled Assembly passes the plan, it will head to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who could make changes with his partial veto or even wipe out the entire budget, though that would be unlikely as it would require lawmakers to start over and scrap aspects that Evers helped craft.

Evers hasn’t said what he will do and Republicans tried to write the budget in such a way that it would be difficult for him to make substantial changes even with his line-item veto power.

Evers previously threatened to veto the entire budget over the University of Wisconsin’s $32 million cut, funding that Republicans identified as going toward diversity, equity, or DEI, programming and staff. But the budget would allow for the university to get the funding later if it could show it would go toward workforce development and not DEI.

Republicans also refused to fund UW’s top building project priority, a new engineering facility on the Madison campus. The university, backed by the state’s business leaders, urged lawmakers to reconsider, saying the new building would get at the heart of Republicans’ goal of workforce development because it would allow for more students to graduate with engineering degrees.

The cut to UW stands out in a $99 billion budget where funding was increased or at least held steady across state government. Public K-12 schools, for example, would see a $1 billion funding increase under a deal Republicans reached with Evers that would also bolster funding for local governments by $1 billion.

Democrats also object to a $3.5 billion income tax cut that would benefit wealthy filers more than lower income earners. The tax cut shrinks Wisconsin’s brackets from four to three, moving it closer to the flat income tax rate in neighboring Illinois.

Evers had proposed an income tax cut more targeted to lower- and middle-income earners.

Democrats argue that Republicans are squandering a projected record-high $7 billion budget surplus, fueled largely by federal pandemic aid. Republicans defend their cuts to a child care program and a state office of school safety, saying the don’t want to commit too much of the surplus to areas that require ongoing spending.

The budget covers the two-year period that begins Saturday and runs through June 30, 2025. Current spending levels will continue until Evers signs a new budget.

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Republican lawmakers are raising questions about media reports that say the person who left a bag of cocaine in the White House might never be found.

‘I’ve been in and out of that entrance a million times. It’s one of the most heavily secured and constantly surveilled places on earth. They keep detailed records on who enters and exits and when. I find it difficult to accept that they can’t figure out who put the cocaine there,’ Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said on Thursday night. 

The comments come after multiple reports citing unnamed sources close to the U.S. Secret Service probe of the incident suggested the suspect’s identity might not be determined over the course of the investigation. 

‘How can the [White House] say the cocaine culprit will likely never be Identified? They have video and visitor logs as well as facial recognition,’ said Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., similarly questioned, ‘How can law enforcement officials say it is ‘unlikely’ they’ll be able to track down the culprit who brought cocaine into the White House?’

There have been conflicting reports about where the cocaine was found. When the news first broke, it was alleged that the substance had been found in the White House library. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Wednesday that it had been in a ‘heavily traveled’ part of the West Wing. Multiple outlets reported on Thursday that it had been found near the West Executive entrance, a more secure location than previously thought.

The Secret Service is currently investigating the incident, which the White House said occurred while President Biden and his family were away at Camp David.

Some of Biden’s Republican critics suggested they believed the administration was not interested in finding the person’s real identity. 

‘White House cocaine culprit unlikely to be found, as long as White House officials don’t want them found,’ said Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D.

Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., suggested going a step further and forcing top officials to submit to drug tests.

‘So let me get this straight, the White House is refusing to say whether the cocaine culprit will be arrested? Well, I think we should drug test EVERYONE, including Joe Biden, until we know who smuggled illegal drugs into the White House,’ she said.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre lashed out at a reporter Friday who asked whether the cocaine found in the West Wing last weekend belonged to a member of the Biden family.

The exchange happened during the daily White House press briefing when New York Post reporter Caitlin Doornbos asked if Jean-Pierre could ‘say once and for all whether or not the cocaine belonged to the Biden family,’ and also asked why deputy press secretary Andrew Bates dodged questions related to the cocaine by citing the Hatch Act a day earlier.

‘So – a couple of things there,’ Jean-Pierre began, appearing visibly uncomfortable. ‘He mentioned the Hatch Act because the question was posed to him in – using Donald Trump. And so he was trying to be very mindful.’

She claimed the administration wasn’t ‘avoiding the question,’ and that she had ‘exhaustively’ answered questions on the cocaine for days.

‘You know, there has been some irresponsible reporting about the family. And so I’ve got to call that out here. And I have been very clear. I was clear two days ago when talking about this over and over again as I was being asked the question,’ Jean-Pierre said, appearing increasingly angry.

‘As you know, and media outlets reported this, the Biden family was not here. They were not here. They were at Camp David. They were not here Friday. They were not here Saturday. They were not here Sunday. They were not even here Monday. They came back on Tuesday. So to ask that question is actually incredibly irresponsible. And I’ll just leave it there,’ she added.

House Republicans opened an investigation into the cocaine discovery on Monday, calling on the head of the U.S. Secret Service to give Congress more information. House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., blasted the illicit discovery as a ‘shameful’ moment.

The situation has even attracted scrutiny from liberal network MSNBC, with one host speculating that the cocaine didn’t belong to just an ‘average’ person since it was found near the Situation Room in a secure location.