Attorney General William Barr on Friday dismissed allegations that he lied to Congress, speculating Democrats are accusing him of doing so to undermine his election review.

Barr spoke with Fox News in an interview that aired Friday morning and said that the charge from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and others that he lied to Congress is "laughable."

"I think it's largely being made to try to discredit me, partly because they may be concerned about the outcome of a review of what happened during the election," he said.

Barr is conducting a review into the origins of the Russia probe, which he told The Wall Street Journal could bring about rule changes. President Trump has repeatedly claimed that his 2016 campaign was improperly "spied on" and that this amounts to "treason," while FBI Director Christopher Wray testified that he has seen no evidence that illegal spying occurred.

Pelosi had previously accused Barr of lying to Congress, and Democrats took issue with his testimony that he was unaware of concerns from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team with his summary of their findings, even though he received a letter from Mueller expressing concern. Barr has argued his testimony was accurate because he only heard from Mueller himself and because he claims Mueller privately told him his summary didn't misrepresent the report's findings.

Barr during this Fox News interview also dismissed Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee voting in favor of holding him in contempt of Congress, The Hill reports, saying it's "part of the usual game" and calling it a "political circus" while adding, "I don't feel threatened." Brendan Morrow

President Trump during a press conference on Thursday spent several minutes calling on numerous aides to explain to the press how calm he was while meeting with Democrats a day earlier.

During a press conference ostensibly about his $16 billion farm aid package, Trump talked about his decision on Wednesday to walk out of a meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), which Pelosi characterized as a "temper tantrum."

Trump insisted on Thursday he walked out in a perfectly calm fashion and proceeded to pick out White House officials and ask them to back up his account. First up was White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, who insisted Trump was "very calm" and did not throw a "temper tantrum." Conway also seemed to suggest there exists a tape of the meeting.

Trump then asked the same of White House Director of Strategic Communications Mercedes Schlapp, Director of National Economic Council Larry Kudlow, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley, all of whom insisted Trump was calm in the meeting.

While describing his calm demeanor, Trump also repeatedly tore into Pelosi by saying she has "lost it" and describing her as "crazy," a "mess," and "not the same person." He also once again declared that he is an "extremely stable genius."Brendan Morrow

The Espionage Act just became relevant again.

For the first time in the law's 100-year history, the Department of Justice has accused a journalist of violating it, charging Wikileaks founder Julian Assange with 16 counts of receiving or publishing classified information. Thursday's indictment also charges Assange with one count of conspiracy to receive the leaked documents from Chelsea Manning, and reinstates Assange's April charge of conspiring to violate computer hacking laws, The Daily Beast reports.

Assange's charges stem back to 2010, when then-Army intelligence analyst Manning allegedly leaked classified Department of Defense information to Assange for publication. Assange was charged in April with conspiring to help Manning hack those computers after London's Ecuadorian embassy revoked his asylum claim.

Thursday's charges immediately rang alarm bells for journalists, with The Daily Beast writing that it is a "stunning escalation of the Trump administration's war on the press." "Legal scholars believe that prosecuting reporters over their work would violate the First Amendment," The New York Times continues, which is partly why former President Barack Obama's administration never charged Assange under the Espionage Act. The DOJ's National Security Division head John Demers countered those concerns by saying "the department takes seriously the role of journalists in our democracy ... But Julian Assange is no journalist."

Assange was also sentenced to 50 weeks in prison for skipping bail in the U.K., and Sweden has reopened a 2010 rape investigation into him. Sweden and the U.S. have both moved to extradite Assange after his prison stay. Kathryn Krawczyk

Kids who are the victims of racially-motivated bullying may be at risk in more ways than one, a new report has found.

The report analyzed data from the California Healthy Kids Survey, a voluntary survey administered to children through their schools. The results point to a worrying link between bullying and drugs and alcohol for children in California high schools from 2013 to 2018, U.S. News reported on Thursday. The data suggests that children who were bullied for their race, ethnicity, or origin were 11 percent more likely to drink alcohol, 9 percent more likely to use marijuana, and 8 percent more likely to use opioids or other medication not as prescribed.

The study found that black and Asian students were the most targeted for bullying, with 22 percent and 20 percent of each group reporting having been bullied at least once in the 2017-2018 school year. White students were the least affected by bullying, but that figure was still at 11 percent.

Being under stress can lead to risky or unhealthy habits even in adults. So the fact that it's affecting adolescents in schools is concerning, given that the still-developing brains of teenagers are already "more likely to engage in risky behavior," explained Virginia Huynh, a professor in child and adolescent development.

Read more about the survey and its results U.S. News. Shivani Ishwar

Count this as another victory for Democrats.

President Trump had long resisted signing off on disaster funding for Puerto Rico and several other states, recently claiming he'd only approve the bill if it included $4.5 billion in border wall money. But on Thursday, Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) said Trump had agreed with Democrats to sign the bill, no border funding necessary, NBC News reports.

Puerto Rico has yet to recover from Hurricane Maria's 2017 devastation, with things getting even worse in March when Congress and Trump failed to renew additional food stamp aid for the island. Trump later claimed Puerto Rico got $91 billion in funding and, despite that number being not quite accurate, argued the island didn't need any more money. Thursday's agreement, though, seems to mark a change of pace.

The bipartisan bill, which Shelby credited Trump for "break[ing] the gridlock" and agreeing to in a Thursday press release, gives Puerto Rico an additional $605 million for the food stamp Nutrition Assistance Program and $304 million to Community Development Block Grants. It also contains a provision forcing Trump to allow $8.9 billion in withheld aid to get to Puerto Rico, and another provision "ensuring more damaged facilities in Puerto Rico will be repaired or replaced," per a bill breakdown from Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). Billions of dollars in other aid will go toward flooding, hurricane, and wildfire damage on the mainland. Kathryn Krawczyk

Facebook removed nearly as many fake accounts in the first quarter of 2019 as it has monthly active users, and it estimates fake accounts make up a growing percentage of the platform.

The company in its Community Standards Enforcement Report released on Thursday revealed that from January to March of this year, it removed a staggering 2.19 billion fake accounts. To put that record number in perspective, Facebook in the first quarter of this year said it had 2.3 billion monthly active users, The Washington Post reports.

The number of fake accounts deleted in this first quarter was up significantly from Q4 2018, when Facebook says it removed 1.2 billion accounts. Facebook on Thursday explained it has seen a "steep increase in the creation of abusive, fake accounts" in the past six months, especially because of "automated attacks by bad actors who attempt to create large volumes of accounts at onetime."

Facebook said that most of these accounts are deleted "within minutes of registration" and not counted as part of its number of monthly active users. But in its report, the company also said that "we estimated that 5 percent of monthly active accounts are fake," which The Associated Press reports is up from from between 3 and 4 percent in the previous report.

Facebook VP of Analytics Alex Schultz on Thursday said the "prevalence number for fake accounts includes both abusive and user-misclassified accounts," with an example of the latter being "when a person sets their pet up with a profile, instead of a Page." Overall, he said the company is "confident that the vast majority of people and activity on Facebook are genuine." Brendan Morrow

A Chicago judge has just ordered the unsealing of Empire star Jussie Smollet's criminal case file, NBC News reports.

Judge Steven G. Watkins said on Thursday that although Smollett's lawyers had argued the court documents should remain sealed to protect Smollett's privacy, this is inconsistent with Smollett's decision to speak publicly to the media about the case after the charges against him were dropped. "These are not the actions of a person seeking to maintain his privacy or simply be let alone," CNN reports.

Watkins also said that the "court cannot credit his privacy interest as good cause to keep the case records sealed." It remains unclear when the Smollett case file will be made publicly available, as multiple media outlets had been requesting.

Smollett in January claimed he was the victim of a hate crime, telling police that two men attacked him in Chicago. After an investigation, police accused Smollett of orchestrating the attack against himself because he was dissatisfied with his salary on Empire, and he was hit with criminal charges. But in March, those charges were suddenly dropped. Numerous questions remained about what led to that stunning turn of events, but the case file was sealed. Now that they've been ordered unsealed, once the documents are released, this could help elucidate prosecutors' decision to drop the charges, The New York Times notes.

Smollett has continued to maintain his innocence, saying that he only paid the two men who attacked him for personal training but not to help orchestrate the attack. After the charges were dropped, Chicago police and then Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel blasted the decision, with Emanuel saying the situation is "making a fool of all of us." Brendan Morrow