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cnn newsroom. i m abby phillip in washington to very serious charges for that 21 year old air national guardsman accused of leaking a trove of sensitive classified documents online. you can see there jack to share as parents outside of the courthouse this morning in boston. there, son was in shackles facing a judge less than 24 hours after he peacefully surrendered to a swarm of heavily armed fbi agents. prosecutors revealed today that to share a had a top secret clearance since 2021 that he allegedly leaked the alleged leading began long afterward in a online discord group. the pentagon says that this was a deliberate criminal act, and the new court documents show that members of that chat group gave the fbi information that could be key to making that case. cnn s natasha bertrand is at the pentagon, natasha so lay out what the charges that he s facing our yeah, abby, so he did appear in court in massachusetts this morning, and he was officially charged with two separa ....
Pentagon, natasha so lay out what the charges that he s facing our yeah, abby, so he did appear in court in massachusetts this morning, and he was officially charged with two separate counts here. the first is unauthorized retention and transmission of national defense information, and the second is unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material now these, of course, relate. to the allegation that he removed sensitive and highly classified information from his place of work, which was the air national guard in massachusetts, the intelligence wing of the air national guard there and then he allegedly posted them on this private social media platform called discord, where dozens of people who were not authorized to view these documents were, of course, able to view them and we re told just in the last few hours a couple more details about what actually he was doing in the air national guard and why he had access actually to these top secret documents. we are learn ....
What is basically in the press and what s being said. the accurate as far as what occurred will come out in terms of time. and again he s going to be officially arraigned on april 25th, and that s when we should get more information. abby so veronica. this case really stirred up a lot of controversy with people, um, suggesting that it was tied to san francisco s crime, and the san francisco district attorney actually called out twitter owner elon musk for recklessly and reckless and irresponsible statements after musk tweeted out something about lee s death, so what s happening there? a lot of people were quick to go to social media . elon musk was one of them. of course, he has an incredibly massive following. so the district attorney had some very sharp awards for him. i think you know, when people first found out about this, there was the assumption that this was a violent and random attack, and the facts are still coming out. ....
Pretty. i mean, do you see any possible way out a defense here for the suspect? there really? isn t abby. look people lied. people s memories are spotty. but the internet does not and, um i p addresses and login times and messages that people send often can lead a defendant to being convicted, and that s certainly going to and that s certainly going to happen here. but i think what seem to point in that direction now, which it s not a defense, but certainly at sentencing. he can make an argument that look, i wasn t attempting to harm the united states. what i thought i was doing was something righteous. and i don t have a criminal history before and maybe a sympathetic judge might give him a slightly lower sentence under the federal sentencing guidelines, but that s not a defense to the crime and individual who faces a tremendous amount of evidence that s electronic evidence sends a pretty decent chance of getting convicted or avoiding a conviction all altogether and simply pleading gu ....
And that can be multiplied several times over for punitive damages. but can they prove that 1.6 billion? that s where battle is going to be joined? but boy abby, just looking at the things that have been said and done. ah the damage seems substantial will have to see what the jury decides. yeah and also i could add to that the actual malice part of this that they knowingly told these lies as well. seems to be a pretty significant hurdle they have to face. thank you, norm eisen appreciate it. thanks, abby. and cnn s nick paton walsh and his team recently hiked a massive migrant trail from south america to central america. it is called the darien gap, and there are no roads. people must walk carrying everything that they own through this dense jungle, rushing waters and steep mountainsides. the team did this walk over five days, and the stories that they found on that journey are simply extraordinary. take a look. ....