Jack Teixeira appears in US court charged over Pentagon leaks - BBC News

A young member of the US National Guard just appeared in

court

in Boston to face espionage charges over a massive leak of secret government documents. Jack Desera, 21, was arrested yesterday by FBI agents. The material reveals sensitive intelligence information on issues such as the war in Ukraine. and these are some of the pictures of the last few minutes with family and other people and the legal teams leaving the

court

house in Boston in the last 45 minutes or so, when the

news

broke that that whole court appearance had been completed, the key line was the charge of Of course, he is accused of removing and retaining classified documents and materials without authorization and we know that he will be detained pending trial.

It's not very clear in terms of when exactly that trial will be scheduled, but he will certainly be detained pending trial and has been assigned a public defender, but that court appearance came while, of course, all the media was They gathered around the family members and legal teams asking questions and so many questions about how this 21-year-old was able to access the level of confidential documents that we actually saw. know a little more about him he is 21 years old he is a member of the US Air National Guard. He was listed as a member of the intelligence wing of his Massachusetts Air National Guard and we also have documents from the US government that confirm that has held senior security clearance since 2021 and, according to our partners at CBS, joined the US Government Department's US Air National Guard in 2019, so details to come all the time They'll go back to those images around the court, a very fluid situation there, but I've been talking to Jess Parker in Washington who, of course, is also monitoring what's happening.

This is the latest evaluation of him. I've been hearing from the court in Boston as you describe what we're hearing: the suspect Jack Texera has been

charged

with. unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents and materials from a U.S. magistrate judge and we also told him he would qualify for a public defender. There were earlier reports that it was actually unclear if the suspect had a lawyer and we are also told that the US Department of Justice has requested that he be detained pending trial, so some breaking lines They left the courthouse this morning here in the US, of course, it was yesterday that we received such dramatic images emerging from an arrest as FBI officers swooped in to arrest the 21-year-old, a suspect who was only dressed in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, arrested, as we understand it, near the family home and now rushing to court this morning to face those charges.

Now I'm looking at some of those images in terms of what you've described, but the Pentagon talked a little bit earlier about why someone like this, a 21-year-old, would have access to the type of documents that they had talking about a review, but I mean in terms I think the Pentagon, the US government, is now facing some pretty serious questions about how the suspect could have accessed these documents which, of course, are alleged to have been posted online between a kind of euphemism. from a fairly small group of players from different parts of the world and eventually the documents that were reported escaped from that smaller group and began to leak more widely.

Now yes, they tell us that the Pentagon is going to review how highly classified and highly confidential information is distributed. but it's not like we haven't talked about these types of issues before there have been very high profile cases of

leaks

from the US in the last 15 years, so I think it won't just be a question for the Biden Administration . for example, it will be more systemic to look at how this has happened and the American networks watching them this morning, with security experts being asked again and again how someone who was relatively young could have access to this type of information if They were also quite Junior in their rank and of course the 21 year old suspects that he is very young so a lot of questions are being asked and I suppose in the coming days and weeks then more of these questions can be answered but It has been an embarrassing episode for the United States certainly yes, you alluded to it, but I mean a lot of warnings with Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden in the past, so the obvious question of how something like this could happen again, but maybe this time it's a little different because not a whistleblower not a foreign agent not disgruntled or skeptical about the US government this seems to be just a 21 year old kid effectively flaunting yeah I mean that one It's certainly the kind of reports that we've been getting uh uh in the last few days, this suggestion that the suspect, as I mentioned before, was part of some sort of online group of gamers where they participated in various types of activities together. , including, for example, praying together, playing games, watching movies, and suggestions have been from friends of that group in reports here in the US that they may be the suspect was almost trying to impress the other young people of this group, so there's no suggestion really at the moment of any sophisticated operation by a foreign agent, um, so again, yeah, that raises questions.

I think it again causes some embarrassment for the US government? Let's have Jessica Parker talk to me when

news

of those charges were dropped there in court.