your sleep apnea. if you struggle with cpap, look into getting inspire. inspire. sleep apnea innovation. learn more and view important safety information at inspiresleep.com. >> woman: why did we choose safelite? we're always working on a project. while loading up our suv, one extra push and... crack! so, we scheduled at safelite.com. we were able to track our technician and knew exactly when he'd arrive. we can keep working! ♪ synth music ♪ >> woman: safelite came to us. >> tech: hi, i'm kendrick. >> woman: replaced our windshield, and installed new wipers to protect our new glass. that's service on our time. >> singers: ♪ safelite repair, safelite replace. ♪ >> sandra: all new at 2:00, republican senator tim scott joining "america reports" live from manchester, new hampshire this hour where he is on the ground after taking a major step

toward a possible presidential run. >> bill: the south carolina native has put optimism and hope at the center of his message. leaning heavily on his own ration to riches story or as he says cotton to congress in one lifetime. rise to the dream in what could be a crowded republican field. >> sandra: and welcome back as "america reports" rolls into a busy second hour, a lot of news expected. bill, good to be here with you. >> bill: good to be with you as well. i'm bill melugin coming up in this hour, but it is a busy day in washington and massachusetts, law enforcement are circling in on the man believed to be behind the pentagon leaks. >> sandra: any moment now you are looking live at the pentagon, leaders are expected to face questions from reporters on this highly classified intelligence leak. what we know so far.

a law enforcement source telling fox the fbi is searching for a member of the massachusetts air national guard in connection to the leak, adding they are not naming him until he is in custody. >> bill: comes after an explosive report by "the washinton post," a man in his mid to late 20s who worked on a military base. >> sandra: online pal says it's not political but to impress friends from foreign nations. breaking news as soon as the briefing begins. >> bill: in the meantime, mark esper is here with us. >> sandra: mark, are you there? ok. >> i keep moving back. >> sandra: that's ok, let's kick this off. what do you expect to hear from the pentagon and what do you

want to know most? we'll try to reestablish connection with him. roll first on ro khanna last hour. making the suggestion, bill, that there needs to be a major crackdown on the social media sites, he says they are allowing this information to be posted. in this case, our nation's top-secret. here is ro khanna last hour. >> we also need to ask the social media sites where he shared this, and what was going on, and how we get a better handle on discord, some of these sites where this kind of information is proliferating. that needs to be monitored in some way. these sites can't just be places where you either have hate speech or you have the leak of classified information. >> sandra: all right, so mr. secretary, as we await this briefing, what do you want to hear most right now out to the pentagon? >> well, it's important to find this young man and find out what he did, why he did it, and

probably most immediately, how much is out there. what is the scope and scale of this release of classified information. i would want to know that immediately to get our arms around it and find out what the damage was done to our national security. >> bill: and secretary, this leaker apparently got documents while working at a military base, don't know if it's at fort bragg where he has apparently been, but seen from the photos printed off some documents physically, so what is your reaction to hearing he got these at a military base where you would think there would be a whole lot of security when it comes to scifs. >> look, we clearly overclassified too much at the pentagon and also overdistribute too much and i have no idea why a 21-year-old tech support person has access to this classified information that apparently came from the joint staff and from the cia operation center. look, i understand the air wing he's assigned to is part of an

intelligence collection unit, that's fine, i understand he would see information coming through, raw information, but why he would have access to this type of information from the cia and joint staff that is typically only provided to most senior people at the pentagon is confounding. >> sandra: we'll have our team alert us when we have a shot at the home, the alleged home of the person involved here, mr. secretary. i assume we are going to know a whole lot more in just the coming minutes over who this person is, the group from where he came, not representing the national guard, obviously, in this matter, but there online private chat group and which he was sharing our nation's top-secret. what kind of punishment is there for this? >> well, i'm not a lawyer but i suspect he's committed a number of felonies with handling of classified information. first of all, obviously he downloaded it or printed it off illegally and they he had it

illegally in his possession, and then he distributed online. my sense would be that there have been a number of criminal laws broken here. >> bill: you just mentioned you don't know why he would potentially had access to these documents. how do you figure out who dropped the ball here in terms of why these documents were in his possession? how do we know there are not other leakers out there who have access to similar information? where do you start in terms of trying to get this shored up? >> you have to start at the distribution lists and how that is allocated, if you will. i had to launch a similar investigation in the summer of 2020 because we were having a number of leaks occurring with regard to operational matters, deployments, and first you think it's a few dozen people and then hundreds and thousands once you figure out where all the information moves around, the emails and the data is passed around to other people. they may have access, they may

have the ability to know, they don't have the need to know and it gets to this young air man. he may have had the credential, if you will, the clearances to have access to information but did not need to have it, at least as far as i can see this type of information. that's where we need to get to. i'm pleased to see already tightening up the circle of people who have access to it. that will le important. >> sandra: let's get to the pentagon, looks like the briefing is about to get underway, we expect to hear more from the leaker and who it is. >> we are aware of the press reports regarding a potential suspect in the department of justice's ongoing investigation into unauthorized disclosures of documents appearing to emanate from throughout the intelligence community. because this is an ongoing criminal investigation i will have to refer you to the doj or any questions. this is a law enforcement matter and it would be inappropriate for me or any other dod official to comment at this time.

and certainly when we have more to provide from the department of defense we will. in the meantime, as secretary austin has stated, the department is taking the issue of this unauthorized disclosure very seriously. we continue to work around the clock, along with the inner agency and the intelligence community to better understand the scope, scale, and impact of these leaks. and just as we are limited in what we can say about the doj ongoing investigation, we'll be also very limited in what we can say about any of the documents themselves and while we certainly understand the media's interest in asking questions about the contents of these documents, i will highlight that as a matter of long standing policy, just because classified information may be posted online or elsewhere does not mean it has been declassified by a classification authority. and those of you who have been covering the pentagon for a long time know that we are just not going to discuss or confirm classified information due to

the potential impact on national security as well as the safety and security of our personnel and those of our allies and our partners, and for that reason we will continue to encourage those of you who are reporting the story to take the latter factors into account and consider the potential consequences of posting potentially sensitive documents of information online or elsewhere. secretary austin hosted latvia's minister of defense at the pentagon. leaders discussed the strength of the u.s.-latvia relationship and ongoing efforts to support ukraine and discussed shared security interests in europe, including the nato deterrence and defense posture. readout available later today. staying on europe for a moment, next week secretary austin will travel to sweden to meet with his counterpart to discuss security-related topics shared by our two nations from. there he'll travel to germany where he and general milley will

host an in-person meeting on april 21st of the ukraine defense from contact group at ramstein air base. the 11th meeting since it was established one year ago. the secretary and general milley will join ministers of defense and senior military officials from nearly 50 nations around the world to discuss the ongoing crisis in ukraine and to continue our close coordination on providing the ukrainian people with the means necessary to protect themselves against russia's unprovoked and illegal aggression. and as we have highlighted before, the contact group has instrumental in identifying, synchronizing and ensuring delivery of the the military capabilities the ukrainians need to defend their homeland. semi related note, the arkansas army national guard combat team will replace the new york army national guard 27th infantry brigade combat team and ukraine in germany.

the 27th infantry brigade combat team took charge during a transfer authority ceremony in august of 2022, the first and only unit in the eight-year history to assume the unit mission for a second time. we look forward to the arrival of the 39th and the continuation of the important work to provide ukraine what it needs in terms of training to defend itself. with that, i'll be happy to go to your questions. start with a.p. >> thank you, general ryder. can you confirm air man first class jack teixeira, member of the massachusetts air national guard is the person of interest in this case. >> there is an ongoing criminal investigation so anything related to that i'll need to refer you to the doj or the fbi. >> can you speak at all to if anyone in the department of defense has reached out to this air man, do you know where he

is, there are reports that law enforcement is closing in on this airman's location. so has anyone been able to reach out to him? >> again, tara, appreciate the question, but given it's an ongoing investigation i'm not able to talk about the investigation or potential doj action. i would refer you to them. >> in the days after the leaks came to light, what steps has dod taken to reduce the number of people who have access to not only these classified briefings but classified material in general. >> sure. so, we continue to review a variety of factors as it relates to safeguarding materials. examining and updating distribution lists, assessing how and where intelligence products are shared and variety of other steps. i would say, though, that it is important to understand that we do have stringent guidelines in place for safeguarding

classified and sensitive information. this was a deliberate criminal act, a violation of those guidelines, and so again, i think it's important to understand. we will continue to do everything we can to ensure that people who have a need to know when it comes to this kind of information have access to that. we are always going to learn from every situation. this is something we will look at. >> you are taking steps to tighten the population who might have access to this level of information. >> that's accurate. again, we continue to review those distribution lists, update them, make sure there is a need to know. emphasize my point that this was a -- we have rules in place. each of us signs a nondisclosure agreement. anybody that has a security clearance and so all indications are again this is a criminal act, a willful violation of those, and again, another reason why we are continuing to investigate and support doj's

investigation. >> last question. do you have a sense that this is just the act of one individual and even if so, wouldn't members of his chain of command also be held accountable for this lost information? >> again, i don't want to speculate or get ahead of the doj's investigation. we need t allow that to run its course and so i would refer you to them. go ahead and go to gordon, and back to jen. >> two questions. one, just to clarify. in dod's efforts to change the way you do business in terms of protecting classified information, apart from the stuff that you do already, is that dod-led or joint staff led who is kind of directing what on that, and second question, hypothetically, i know you like hypotheticals, if somebody was to be charged, what would determine whether the military would charge and indict and you know, carry out the legal

process against that person or people or doj? >> you are right, i don't want to get into hypotheticals. every case is judged on its own merits and we need to allow the investigation to run its course and then of course more to say on that. on your first question, again, it's important to understand this is not just about dod, this is about the u.s. government, this is about how we protect and safeguard classified information and as i highlighted, we do have strict protocols in place. so any time there is an incident, any time there is an opportunity to review that and refine it, we are of course going to take advantage of that. within the department of defense, as you've heard us say, secretary austin has been convening daily meetings with his senior leaders to include the chairman to talk about reviewing the scope and the impact of this, and also to look at mitigation measures and what we need to do across the

department of defense to ensure that we are doing our utmost to reinforce existing policies, procedures, and rules, and if there are any areas where we need to tighten things up with you certainly will. that's right, as i mentioned. when i say dod, i mean the department of defense, across the entire enterprise. jen. >> general ryder, you say there are strict protocols in place and yet a 21-year-old airman was able to access some of the nation's top-secret. how did this happen, isn't that a massive security breach? >> again, we need to allow the investigation to run its course. we'll of course know more when that is completed. i would refer you to doj on that. >> what is your message to anyone who might be thinking of leaking these kind of documents in the future? >> look, again, we have procedures, we have protocols in place. we receive regular training on

the proper handling of classified information. as i mentioned, we sign nondisclosure agreements, so those rules are very clear and anyone who has a security clearance knows that. anyone who violates those rules is doing to willfully. >> can you put into context the damage done by the leak? >> we are continuing to assess the scope and impact, so that's work that will be ongoing. tony. >> how large was the distribution network for these documents, say, prior to last thursday when the disclosures came out. talking thousands of people that had access, inside the pentagon and outside the pentagon, so include europe and bases around the united states? >> tony, so i don't have any numbers to provide you, i'm sure you can appreciate the department of defense and our components, it's a global enterprise doing work in all areas of the world. so certainly we have people who have access to information that they need to do their jobs, but i don't have any numbers for

you. >> you say it was widespread, though, versus outside the pentagon to other military installations? >> the department of defense, we conduct global operations. so intelligence products, operational information products are shared with dod leaders and personnel, whether it's component comment, the services, but understand about classified information, it's not just i want to have access to it because i have a clearance. it's all based on need to know. do you have a need to know that information, and that typically will grant you access if you have the appropriate clearances. thanks. >> thanks. >> thanks, pat. i'm still confused on the access issue. you said that there were changes that were made, but you also said that you are reviewing things. can you tell us where -- are there less people who have access to this type of information today than there were a week ago? >> so travis, again, i'm not

going to -- i'm not going to get down to numbers. again, reviewing distribution lists, looking at who has a need to know, making sure those things are updated. due diligence in the wake of these unauthorized disclosures. i want to emphasize this was a deliberate criminal act to violate those guidelines and rules and the same way that you locked your front door and somebody came into your house and took something, you followed your procedures and you locked your door but somebody went in your house and took something and put it out on the street. that's what we are talking about here. left me go to karla. >> just a couple questions on this and then a follow on something separate. why did it take so long to brief the secretary about the leaks? he said he was briefed on april 6th, and would you classify that delay as a failure of the open source intelligence teams? >> absolutely not. we were notified, the department

became aware on the 5th, the secretary was briefed hours later in the morning of the 6th. i don't consider that a delay. thanks. >> to follow on that, the documents were available long before april 5th and 6th. what took so long for dod and the intelligence community to locate these documents? >> yeah, so, that's really something that the investigation will tell us. that said, i think it's important to remember that dods intelligence activities are primarily -- >> sandra: we are going to come out for this, back to the briefing at the pentagon in a moment, this just in, the fbi has made an arrest, we are now learning the fbi has made an arrest and is continuing to conduct authorized law enforcement activity at a residence in north dyton, massachusetts, fbi says they cannot provide further comment at this time. one can obviously say that this is happening with this happening at the pentagon in this moment, although no specific name has

been given to us via that statement. >> bill: as the news spreads in the briefing room, brigadier general pat ryder will likely get questions. he was asked by jen griffin, how do you stop something from happening again, he said in part we have procedures and protocols in place, everybody signs an nda. it didn't work in this case. you know. >> sandra: calling it a deliberate criminal act, direct violation of classified guidelines, detailing a criminal investigation. mark esper is standing by with us. first dip back into the pentagon for more news. get to the secretary in a moment. >> can you just tell us what the mission of the 102nd intelligence wing of the massachusetts air national guard was, and are you going to release this airman's service record in response to i'm sure the thousands of requests you've already gotten?

>> yeah, so, david, on the service record, again, we'll take that and we'll provide an update when we are able to. in terms of the 102nd intelligence wing, i don't have that in front of me. i'm positive they have a website we can find the fact sheet up there. in general, intelligence wings throughout the air force support what you would imagine, air force intelligence requirements worldwide to support a variety of types of intelligence missions and requirements. so, which include active guard and reserve components. >> thank you so much, general ryder. what technologies is the pentagon applying right now to both spot leaked documents online and track potential indicators of leaking-type practices. do you plan to be investing in more? >> again, brandy, so when it comes to this particular situation we'll know more when the investigation is concluded.

as i highlighted when it comes to intelligence collection within the department of defense, focused primarily internationally. i'm not going to get into the specifics of where, how and when we conduct our intelligence activities, but we are always looking at potential gaps, potential vulnerabilities, and that's something that will just be ongoing. >> you are using technologies right now to spot potential leakers of future documents. >> it's -- you are asking me a hypothetical, basically. we are always going to be on the look out, always on the look out for any potential insider threats. again, we get training on how to spot insider threats, but again as i mentioned to travis, you've locked your door, you've lent some keys to your friends, if one of those friends decides to give the keys away, you know, hopefully you have been able to clue in on those signals. >> i don't think it's lost on anyone in this room this happening at the same time

deputy secretary hicks is conducting a review of the pentagon's classification practices and at times overclassification. so can you talk about how this incident is informing that ongoing review? >> again, i think that there's the investigation that the doj is conducting, and then you are talking about something separately, which is again our review of classification requirements, acknowledging where we need to be better in terms of classification. >> having no impact on hicks -- >> i'm going to go on. >> okay. >> i want to come back to the question of distribution on two different questions. given the gravity of the situation, are you actively pairing down the distribution list now, a process that's moving quickly or is it going to take time for there to be meaningful substantive changes to the distribution and then is dod or has dod taken measures to restrict access to others in the

massachusetts air national guard. >> broadly speaking, yes, we are taking and have taken steps to review distribution lists and to ensure that folks receiving information have a need to know. but again, to belabor the point, we have safeguards in place, we have processes, we have procedures. we'll continue to do due diligence as part of this review to ensure that we are doing everything we can to prevent potential unauthorized disclosures in the future, recognizing that again, this was a criminal deliberate act. thank you. i don't have anything on that. >> thank you very much, general. please let me ask you a question about china, two questions of china. >> wait, what? read the room, ro. come on. >> yeah. china conducted three-day

exercises -- >> sandra: a quick moment here to dip out of the briefing, we'll get back in there. mark esper is still with us. mark, your reaction to what you've heard so far in the pentagon briefing room, deliberate criminal act, direct violation of classified guidelines, they have identified the person, we know arrest has been made in massachusetts now. your reaction. >> look, the reporters are asking a lot of great questions and he's answering as i would expect. it is a criminal law enforcement action now so he's not going to touch on that. it would be good to hear more about how they are limiting the distribution, that's something that we talked about before he came on. that's critical here, like i said, i think the dod has an overdistribution problem, and the fact that some 21-year-old tech support airman was able to access finished products by the cia tells you too many people have access to the material that don't, at least apparently have any need to know. so i'm sure secretary austin and

chairman milley are really focusing on that right now. >> bill: and secretary, i got a note from gillian turner who is reporting, according to her sources, suspected leaker worked on military intel systems. what does that say to you? >> yeah, sure, i don't know the mission of the 102nd either as general ryder mentioned, air force intelligence. i assume they are managing collection platforms and things like that. so clearly the airman would have access to the raw information, stuff coming in. how does he have access to finished products from the joint staff and finished products from the cia operation center that are usually or should be just privy to the most senior folks at the department of defense. and again, the other point, i mention is the most important thing, understanding the scale and scope of his release of these documents because that will help us to do a damage assessment, and second is the why. why did he do it? because a concern for me is you want to rule out any type of

foreign influence that he was somehow compromised that there was some, you know, some type of bad behavior with a foreign source, that maybe this was just, he had some political views or he was trying to impress other people on this website that he was on. but i would want to rule out a foreign connection immediately. >> sandra: ok. i just want to make sure our viewers know we will get back to the briefing room, the questions are still ongoing. good to get your thoughts here. jen griffin had an opportunity to ask a question, mr. secretary, and that is based on the protocols that are in place, the nondisclosure agreements, i mean, this is still happening, and i'm just curious if you are hearing the reaction from the pentagon that you would want to hear, it does appear to be a massive breach. but when asked if it's a massive breach, not committing to that. are you surprised? >> yeah, i'm a little surprised. it is a massive breach and its hurt our efforts in ukraine.

may have revealed sources and access in the russian military and caused embarrassment from allies from seoul, korea to israel. so yeah, it is a breach. we don't know the full scale of it. limiting the distribution list is the first step, and then you have to look at can you get some type of insider threat technologies employed in computers so you can see when people are downloading or printing off large amounts of information. that is usually a clue, if will you. i went through it in the private sector, something happening out of the ordinary, gives you a way to investigate these things before they become a problem. >> bill: and secretary, can you pull back the curtain a little bit in terms of what you can, a lot of this classified information which was leaked, some had to do with apparent spying we were doing overseas, that is obviously going to be human intelligence, resources we have on the ground, all over the

globe. what is happening with those folks. they possibly be burned by intel. what's going on with that? >> very important questions, i saw one media report that says it was not human intelligence, it was mostly signals intelligence, but nonetheless, we have to make sure if we have human sources they are protected. but again, the signal sources are very important, gives us critical insight, allows us not only to safeguard our own security but help our allies and partners and prevent dangerous circumstances. so losing those sources, losing that information could be really harmful to our national security and could take months if not years to rebuild. so, that's another concern of mine as well. >> sandra: all right. mr. secretary, if you wouldn't mind, hang on with us as this news continues here. we are learning more. david spunt is at the justice

department. >> 21-year-old air national guardsman from massachusetts, had access to some communications with the air national guard, he was taken into custody about 20 minutes ago at a location connected to his family in massachusetts, not sure if he lived there, if it was potentially a business we are hearing, we know there were some heavy armored vehicles that were on scene probably about an hour ago after authorities began initially making way to get to the suspect. so right now we are waiting to hear from officials at the fbi and the department of justice to tell us a little bit more about what went on here. but we know there is a suspect in custody, we know he is a 21-year-old air national guardsman from the massachusetts air national guard and he is in custody right now. and what's not clear, and this is a question we have been asking, will the case eventually go into the military court system. we of course expect since he's been arrested by the fbi that

he'll make his initial appearance somewhere in massachusetts, not sure if it's boston or springfield, but a question with bradley manning ten years ago that this went into the court-martial system, or the military system, an entirely different legal system and honestly, it doesn't really reveal as many details. when you are in the u.s. district court system, if this was a federal case, we would get a lot of discovery, a lot of documents, indictments and stuff released to the public. but due to the sensitive nature of this bill and sandra, it's possible, we don't know with certainty, it's possible it may move over to a military court system. >> bill: david, i was going to ask you about that. you cover this sort of thing all the time, obviously this arrest just happened. if it doesn't move into military court, how soon could we potentially see some sort of an arrest affidavit or something that would have more details we could glean from in terms of how

they were able to track this guy down? >> it's possible we could see something today, i don't want to promise people. tomorrow is likely, or a few days. it's a sensitive topic with the national security secrets. law enforcement has been looking for this guy for days, it's been all over the headlines across the world, president is talking about it in ireland, so i think there's probably no rush to get that out to the public immediately, but we know at some point soon he's going to appear in a regular federal court whether or not this goes into military court system, that still remains to be seen. >> sandra: david spunt, thank you very much, continue to update us. we'll get back to you as the news warrants. arrest made, the person is now in custody, bill. >> bill: a lot going on, reports the arrest could be imminent, it happened afterwards, a lot going

on this afternoon, sandra. >> sandra: senator tim scott has been standing by for us. senator, a lot to talk to you about. first reaction to what we are talking about, the young man arrested for sharing our nation's top secrets online in a format any of our adversaries could have easily gotten this information and could have. >> certainly, i'm so happy they figured out who it was quickly and arrested the person. i keep seeing failures from our national leadership. i say failure starts at the top without any question. i look forward to hearing more about the details. certainly it feels like he's putting other americans' lives in jeopardy, figure out whether it was just signal information or humans put in jeopardy or perilous situations, treacherous and traitorous.

we want to watch it play out, but no question finding the right protocols, putting them in place and make sure it never happens again is incredibly important. >> sandra: pat ryder a moment ago at the pentagon detailing this very criminal act, listen. >> it is important to understand that we do have stringent guidelines in place for safeguarding classified and sensitive information. this was a deliberate criminal act, violation of those guidelines, so i think it's important to understand. we will continue to do everything we can to ensure that people who have a need to know when it comes to this kind of information have access to that. we are always going to learn from every situation. >> sandra: have you surprised by the messaging? so far we have heard from the pentagon, that heads are not going to roll. where is our messaging to our adversaries that this can never

happen again. >> you said it very well, mark esper did a good job as well. we continue to see weak leadership on the global stage from president biden's white house. leaks happen, breach at the sovereign borders, and adversaries against us and allies question whether we have the resolve to lead. we have some real issues here. one of the things i believe is most concerning are the internal controls that are in place but who is supervising those internal controls. we saw that in the financial industry with the regulators dropped the ball on silicon valley bank and no heads that rolled there. seeing it once again in a different area. dod, seeing another sort of breach that leads to a lot of questions and a lot of people suggesting no big deal. i think it's all very concerning and i believe it starts at the top. >> bill: and senator, i'm told

by our control room, waiting on some video of the suspect being taken into custody by the fbi a short time ago. you're considering a run for president. what would a scott administration look like when it comes to buttoning the hatches on this classified information? we just heard the pentagon say well, we have nda, processes, protocols, protocols didn't work and other guys could have access. if you are president, what are you doing to fix this? >> first thing, make sure the people that don't need the information, don't have the information. close the loop, why does a 21-year-old person have access to the most sensitive information from a national security perspective. what was he working on, why was he working on it, what were the protocols in place to make sure he only had what he needed and how do you hit print and put it online. there are some real important questions on internal controls, the first one is to make sure those who don't need the

information don't have the information. that is a question we need to have answered. second thing, take responsibility and start executing justice in our department of defense. that means to me someone has to be responsible, held accountable, not just the individual but the supervisors around that individual. so there has to be a different framework in place if we are going to keep america's most important and sensitive information safe, secure, and out of the hands of people who don't need it. >> sandra: people are going to want to hear that, we are about to see this young man who was just arrested and taken into custody, who chose to openly share our nation's secrets after being given access to them. >> unbelievable. >> sandra: senator, it is unbelievable. as we listen to you, can we get the big question out of the way, you launched the exploratory committee. are you running?

>> i've been excited about the faith in america, i will say i have been blessed to live the american dream and my greatest hope is that my dream pales in comparison to the next generation's american dreams and the stories that come from another american century. that means we have a lot of work to do and that's why i believe we must have new leadership at the top. biden blueprint to ruin america includes security gaps like we are talking about now, but it also includes security misses like the southern border. too many americans, nearly 70,000 plus, have lost their lives because of fentanyl. four and a half million illegal crossings because we refuse to close our southern border. this is an issue top of the mind of voters all across the country, that i continue to hear. >> sandra: sorry to cut you off there, as bill just mentioned, waiting on the video, we now have it. this is the scene where the suspect was just arrested in this pentagon leak.

this is massachusetts, a big scene showing up at the person's door, clearly we know they were able to find him, and arrest him, and take him into custody. bill, we are watching this together for the first time. >> bill: you can see looks like they have local police blocking off the roads while federal law enforcement moves in to make the arrest. we are told it is a 21-year-old air national guardsman, the person the source of the leak, and looked like they had one of the armored vehicles going in with that caravan of black vehicles, likely federal law enforcement going in to make the arrest. senator scott, if you are still with us, breaking news, what's your reaction to seeing this? i mean, this 21-year-old kid, these leaks started months ago and he has just brought a world of hurt down, not just on himself but on our country. >> think about the severity of the issue we are talking about here.

imperilling likely american lives, weakening the relationship with our allies, emboldening our adversaries and revealing plans about attacks and coordination for ukraine and other allies. this is a massive, catastrophic occurrence that should never have happened and we still have to get to the basic question of what were the internal controls, not just what they were, but who is responsible for those internal controls and why is there a massachusetts national guardsman, not a full-time person in one of our intelligence communities with access to such sensitive information and clearly there was no apparatus around that person that would signal the release of that information, or the taking of that information. we have a lot of work to do to figure out where the bottom of this mess is. it's going to be a very painful, miserable journey, i have a feeling. >> sandra: before we let you go, senator, back to your exploratory committee and

potential run for 2024, what is your decision specifically hinge on, what are you waiting for? >> so i have had, as i said, a lot of success in my faith in america tour, allowed me to go to the next step of the exploratory committee. optimistic, positive message anchored in conservetism -- >> sandra: what have you seen so far? >> so far, so good. i'm in new hampshire, and folks flew in warm weather from south carolina here, i'll continue to do the same thing. home in south carolina tomorrow, i look forward to being there. >> sandra: senator, appreciate you joining us. check back with us soon. let us know when you have news on that front. brian kilmeade now, host of fox and friends and host of one nation. brian, taking in the scene together, scene of the arrest just made and the leaker

involved in the classified documents. what's your reaction to what we know so far? >> aim astounded about the press conference for various points. i guess the press secretary's goal to keep things calm and not overreact, i understand it. but to not show a human emotion to show the national security is breached, trust with our allies is circumvented, no emergency calls from the president of the united states, on a heritage tour to say hey, sorry about that, south korea, apologize for that, israel, never happen again egypt, and let alone what was in some of these communiques. and we understand this general said we have protocols in place, but this guy broke 'em. ok, yes, criminal activity. you go into a scif to look at classified material, you have to be asked did you take anything on a thumb drive, anything on your body, patted down? there are rules. even though you have security

clearances, it doesn't mean there aren't security on top of that. you don't take people at their word, especially clearances a 21-year-old national guardsman, born in 2020, and small discord, i never heard of, chat room, ends up going to wow mow chat room, to a chan 4 chat room, intelegram, and we were not able to penetrate it, astounding. we are the number one nation intellectually intelligence, who is going to tell us a secret again. >> bill: and we are hearing that attorney general merrick garland is expected to speak fairly soon. we don't know how soon, but keeping an eye out for that. of course, that press conference is going to happen just after you can see in the video here

the fbi making this arrest of this suspected leaker. we just heard from the pentagon press conference they were referring all questions about this to the doj. we are now hearing doj merrick garland will be speaking shortly. brian, what do you want to hear from a.g. garland? >> number one, how about some human emotion, outrage it could take place. immediate overhaul and the committee named to take a look at the series of events that brought us to this moment and accomplish chelsea manning, a different first name and different gender, he got pardoned by president obama after giving up secrets and embarrassed the nation ten years, and just as we get some credibility back, edward snowden thought he would do the behavior and give up all of it, and escape to a communist country, russia. time and time again, america is

caught with their pants down. we can get the intelligence, can't hold it. unacceptable through three administration's. >> sandra: thank you for joining us as we look at the video where the arrest was just made and david spunt from the justice department. what can you tell us? >> we are waiting to get more updates from fbi officials and to hear more about what happened, that is going to be happening momentarily. he's going to make an announcement, not sure what it's about, but it's coming shortly after this 21-year-old is arrested. we know he's in custody. fbi custody. will be questioned. the question that we have is when he will make his first court appearance. we talked about this a little, maybe 20 minutes ago or so, that likely he will make his first appearance in the federal court system, not sure if it going to be in boston or another part of

massachusetts and then potentially and we don't know, get transferred to a military court because in the military justice system paperwork and things are not as forthcoming, we don't see as much in that aspect. in federal court there is a government site called pacer where documents are released and you can go through pdfs of documents and indictments and evidence and whatnot. but this is such a sensitive case likely we are not going to see that happen here. as far as the doj investigation is concerned, sandra and bill, it began about a week ago. we know the department of justice independently took over this investigation, the department of defense referred everybody to the department of justice. doj and the fbi have been silent about this, still not officially commenting but multiple sources telling us that activity certainly picked up in the last few hours when they got this 21-year-old in custody. >> sandra: all right, david.

thank you very much. and while these are live pictures outside the scene of the arrest, i believe we have new aerial pictures as well that detail the moment the arrest was made when the guards man who specializes in intelligence was seen. fbi agents converged on the home of this person. according to the a.p., heavily armed tactical agents arrived and took the man, wearing a t-shirt and shorts into custody. outside of the property there. ok, so we are working on getting those aerial images for you. he was then walked out, bill, correct, to a heavily armed vehicle, it was presumed he was as the aerial footage shows them moving in one direction, you saw that earlier on the tape. >> bill: jennifer live from the pentagon. >> we just came out of a very

frustrating pentagon briefing, got basically no information about how this incredible breach occurred and as we watched this vehicle, this aerial video of this kid, essentially, a young air national guardsman who had worked overnight over at the cape cod air base and who was at home and that the "new york times" managed to get to his family faster than the feds. so the "new york times" was there this morning talking to the family. he comes out with his hands up before his head, walks backwards towards the federal agents who are in heavy armored tactical gear, he's wearing red gym shorts and looks like any kid who is on a computer. and that's basically what he was. this is an air national guardsman, age 21, who was given access to the nation's top secrets and decided for the last 6 to 8 months to spill them online to a group of 20 to 24 teenagers and didn't go noticed.

didn't go noticed the secrets had been accessed and what we hear from brigadier general ryder there are protocols in place, thousands of people with being a ses to these -- access to these top secret secrets and here we are watching a kid being led out of his house and is in custody, but no good answers as to how this happened. and how it has happened repeatedly over the last few -- few decades as brian has pointed out. the protocols are still not protecting the nation from these sort of lone wolf leakers. >> sandra: and going back to the follow-up question at the pentagon a few moments ago, can you assess the damage done? the response was we are still assessing the scope of this. classified documents, sensitive information was shared by this person in a very public environment. why can they not characterize

the damage that has already been done knowing this? >> well, one thing to point out is that the pentagon and the intelligence community was not even aware about this until a week ago when the "new york times" broke the story, and it appeared on some russian telegram channels after being online in this discord server for 6 to 8 months. we are told that there are possibly hundreds of documents that were screen shotted by this group of teenagers who was being led by this air national guardsman, they called the o.g., who was their father-like figure in what appeared to be a sort of online cult, and these were gamers who had a chat room and talked about various things. the interview with "the washinton post," the exclusive interview done with one of these other gamers and he was a friend and was part of this group for the last three years, which started during the pandemic, if there's only one thing that they say is that this air national

guardsman did not seem to think he was a spy, he did not -- they wanted to make clear he was not pro-russian or pro-chinese or pro-ukrainian. so the psychological profile of this leaker reminds me very much of the kind of school shooters that we see, you know, repeatedly on the air, 21-year-old males are looking to feel some sort of belonging and the damage that can be done giving them a top -- tsci clearance is just unbelievable and unbelievable after chelsea manning and edward snowden that we are still giving clearances to this kind of young person. >> sandra: jennifer, merrick garland is taking to the microphone. >> jack douglas teixeira, investigation into unauthorized removal, transmission,

transition of national defense information. he is an employee of the united states air national guard. fbi agents took teixeira into custody earlier this afternoon without incident. initial appearance at the district of massachusetts. thank the fbi, justice department prosecutors, and our colleagues at the department of defense for their diligent work on this case. this investigation is ongoing. we will share more information at the appropriate time. thanks, everyone. >> did he have lawful access to the document, sir? >> sandra: that's the news. jack douglas teixeira, employee of the united states air force national guard, he was taken into custody without incident. >> bill: and merrick garland saying he will make an appearance in the district of massachusetts, federal court, i did not hear a date. and what we were asking david spunt, how soon will we see the

affidavit. i believe we have david live at doj. that was a very quick press conference from a.g. merrick garland. thoughts on what you just heard. >> quick statement, no questions. you know, we found out about it just a little bit after the arrest so we had some inkling, jack douglas teixeira, 21 years old, air national guard active duty and exactly the circumstances of his arrest we are still looking to find out. we don't know if he lived at that location where he was picked up, there is some thought it may have been a business, so it's not exactly clear surrounding, number one, how authorities got to teixeira, and number two, the circumstances surrounding his arrest. all of that being said, bill, will come out in this affidavit and in some of the other court documents that will be released. the question is, and i wish i had the answer for you, when are we going to see those documents.

when will those hit the federal court system. i mean, now clearly he's just in the early stages of being processed so i would not expect a court appearance within the next hour or so, because he's being questioned and fingerprinted and whatnot. that all takes a long time when you go in and you get questioned and he may ask for a lawyer, a lot of different aspects moving along right now. but basically the news from the attorney general is after this week-long nightmare of trying to find where this came from, anywhere in the united states or the world, they tracked it down to a 21-year-old kid, jack teixeira. >> sandra: david, if you could stand by at the justice department and jennifer griffin as well, your thoughts on that, jennifer, and obviously addressing the problem, the criminal act by this person. this does not address how we of got here. >> what's notable how quickly

the cyber sleuths, if you will, from bellingcat who do excellent work, tracked down this server, this group that was on the discord server. they tracked the digital footprint of this leaker much faster than the federal government, it appears. and that is how the "new york times" was able to get to what i believe is the family home in north ditton, massachusetts this morning, "new york times" spoke to his parents and the parents said their son needed a lawyer and the feds would likely be on their way and a few hours later the fbi showed up. so, it is really stunning how quickly the open source intel sleuths who are just operating in this -- on these websites and can maneuver into these discord servers without, you know, having to get a warrant and be slowed down by the rules and the laws, legitimate laws that keep

the u.s. government from spying on americans, but the real breaks in this case came from those online sleuths like bellingcat. >> bill: jennifer, thank you. gillian turner, if you are there, i understand you are hearing from your sources about the type of work this suspect was doing at these military bases. what are you hearing? >> that's right, bill. so i found out, fox news has been given exclusive access to internal government documents that reveal the suspect worked on military intelligence systems, he was considered internally to be a systems communications worker rather than intelligence operative, that's a key distinction, in layman's terms, he was a systems guy, operating the military electronic systems, not intelligence operative going out in the field to gather information. he worked for a part of the military called dcgs, distributed common ground

system. that's where a whole host of folks like this suspect work, active duty servicemen, we know he was air national guard, had not been there for an incredibly long time. internally i'm told by my sources, he was considered more of a systems or communications guy. my source tells me internally at the national guard, perhaps even military-wide, there's a big distinction made between the intelligence folks and the folks that run everything that the intelligence folks, the intelligence operatives need in order to do their jobs. when it comes to systems, they are not allowed to do much beyond turning on and off the electronic email systems, anything that needs to be uploaded or download or transferred is -- they bring in these systems workers in order to do this for them. so that's one of the things i'm learning. also was able to confirm, bill, this suspect was active duty at the time of his arrest.

also able to confirm that as of about 20 minutes ago, his security clearance had already been revoked. his top secret security clearance was revoked, no longer has access to those systems. >> bill: got it, one last question, if i'm hearing you correctly, i.t. guy who got his hands on top intel. is that right? >> fair characterization, bill. >> sandra: not too long after it emerged this was the person of main interest on the disclosures, highly classified military documents, he was arrested and right there in ditton, massachusetts a short time ago, merrick garland confirming this, and huge questions how the person had access to the material and then the position to show it to the public. >> bill: and this happened

quick. the report this morning, the guy on the discord channel, giving information from him, and then possibly i.d. the guy and now fbi has him and expecting his first appearance whenever it's going to be. busy day. >> sandra: they will share more information at the appropriate time. great to have you here. thanks for joining us. i'm sandra smith. >> martha: we continue our live coverage of this breaking story this afternoon. good afternoon. i'm martha maccallum. right now on "the story," new video of the arrest of the suspected leaker of this sensitive u.s. intelligence was taken into custody moments ago. the video that we have of his arrest. it is a stunning development today, this 21-year-old taken into custody. the leaker is a member of the massachusetts air national guard. he's 21 years old. as i said, active duty. we now know that his jobas