learned. law enforcement is about to arrest a suspect tied to the leak of a trove of highly secret government intelligence, which is embarrassed the us and strained multiple alliances. today. several blockbuster reports expose who the suspected leader is. the new york times has named him as a 21 year old member of the massachusetts air national guard. cnn has not independently verified his identity, and it s not currently naming him both the times and the washington post said the man is the leader of a chat group on the online platform discord and his older than most members of the group of gamers who call him o. g. one of his friends who spoke anonymously on camera to the post obtained parental permission to do so. because that friend is underage. take a listen. he was. he was a young, charismatic man who loved nature . god who loved shooting guns and in racing cars. he did see himself as the leader of this group, and ultimately he was the leader of this group, and he wanted
provide information present information into a courtroom without that being disclosed, but the bar for that is typically very high but again an espionage cases. that is certainly a concern that the government has. if they can plead, get a plea from this person. they don t have to worry about additional information. additional seat. critz making them out into the public light. so the fact the last thing i ll say is that was also a concern here because when you have a suspect who was facing serious jail time that is often a consideration in whether they cooperate or whether they try to, you know, go out in a hail of gunfire, right? we know this person was a gun enthusiast, so i think for everyone here, the operators, the fbi operators and the suspect the best possible outcome we re seeing on our screen. all right. josh campbell . kim dozier, david priest. thank you and evan perez and colonel cedric leighton. please stay with us. this is cnn breaking news. it is the top of the h
imagine that as the opening argument in a trial and then you ve got these other individuals not named here but identified as employee number 1, are you cooperating witnesses, which it appears they are. it certainly does. it appears the director of i.t. who knew about the videos who s number 4, it afears from the text messages here that individual cooperated. yes, i can t think of another explanation for it. it s so damning, and just imagining that, that is what a defense counsel would say to a defendant to say you need to plea. in any normal circumstance, it s only because he s a former president and might be a future president we re in this abnormal circumstance in which somebody doesn t plea. i ve seen all these espionage cases someone pleas, and to alissa s point especially because there s other people in the crime. other espionage cases are people acting as a rogue individual with secretive information. this is a principal organizing a scheme with his underlings and
a good lawyer that s able to perhaps do a plea. the government is interested often in two things. and that is first. what is the extent of the damage here? they still have a damage assessment to be done. and so we ve seen in past espionage cases, where in exchange change for laying everything out telling us everything. where is all the information? how did this happen? walk us through exactly what happened that can lead to. you know, i won t say light sentences, but that s a consideration the justice department could make if he cooperates, but the second thing is, you know, you have to understand you have a suspect now who will go through the judicial system and be prosecuted if he doesn t plea, the government, especially in classified document cases, is always concerned about the fact that at trial classified information could be revealed in the very act of trying to prosecute this person. now there is something called sepe. the collapses fide information procedures act, which is i us