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ahead. i ll speak with the family of paul weiland, another american, the kremlin has locked up on espionage charges and a group of military families gets the tragic news. nine service members killed when two black hawk choppers crashed. cnn has a crew right near that save. plus tension in the house from paper tossing to hallway shouting in your face. debates are getting heated on the hill. welcome to the lead. i m pamela brown in for jake tapper, and we start today with our world lead. top u . s. officials are strongly criticizing russia after an american reporter was detained on charges of spying. evan gersh covic appeared in a moscow court today accused of trying to steal russian state secrets. his employer, the wall street journal, says it quote vehemently denies those claims. but now gorshkov itch faces up to 20 years in prison. and today , lawmakers on capitol hill are accusing russia of using this journalist as leverage, and the white house is dismissing the ch ....
Permission to come in and speak to mr gerst conviction before, but i think it s a very scary time because you don t really know what s going on. and you have to. you have to wait and see you ve lost entirely control of your life right in the russian state media is reporting that he didn t even have his lawyer with him during his court appearance today. when was the last time that you heard from paul? and how is he doing now? well unexpectedly, he wasn t able to call our parents today. normally he s able to speak to them on a daily basis. he gets 15 minute phone calls from his letter camp, and he has sounded as well as he can considering the situation. do you know any any other details about why he wasn t able to make that call? no i learned about that just before i joined you, so we re a little bit concerned that it s obviously retaliatory or maybe connected to you know the kremlin s overall interest in keeping information from flowing to him about what s going on with mr gerst povich ....
Made between povich s case and your brother s case. what do you think about that? and do you think that this new case makes it more difficult for the us to secure paul s release? well i think each case can make it more difficult. it s obviously still extortion if that s what they re looking for getting concessions from the u. s government, uh, again at face value. um mr gerst povich s case sounds very much like paul s case, which sounded very much like edmund popes case and nicholas daniela s case, so there s a this lineage of the russian federal certainty and security services. uh making these attempts on american citizens and detaining them in the hopes of getting something from the u. s government. where are you with securing paul s release and working with the biden ministrations on that? we are waiting and hoping. unfortunately i think the u. s government has used a number of resources. to free americans in russia in the past to bring home trevor reid and to bring home ....
Brittney griner and those resources don t exist anymore, and it s not clear whether they ve been able to find new resources that could bring paul home. i think the concern we have right now, obviously with mr gerst ceviches arrest today is that they have not been able to deter the kremlin from arresting more americans and charging them with espionage. and so certainly my hope is tinged by that. all right, david whelan. thank you. and best of luck to you and your family. i hope that you hear from paul soon. i want to bring in to russia. experts evelyn farkas is the former deputy assistant secretary of defense for russia , ukraine and eurasia and tom firestone, who served as a legal advisor at the u. s embassy in moscow. evelyn, i want to start with you just to get your reaction of what we just heard from david whelan. yeah i mean, pamela, i m afraid that this is extortion. as he said the russian government is looking to make a swap. probably we know that very recently, one of their spie ....