Detention hearing for alleged military leaker Jack Teixeira to resume Thursday
Mike Brest
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Massachusetts air national guardsman Jack Teixeira, who is accused of leaking hundreds of classified U.S. military documents, will be back in court later this week.
Teixeira, 21, will appear on Thursday afternoon in front of Magistrate Judge David Hennessy, who is set to determine whether he will have his freedom until his trial. It will occur two weeks to the first day of Teixeira’s detention hearing.
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Prosecutors argued that the 21-year-old poses a “serious security risk” in part because he “may still have access to a trove of classified information that would be of tremendous value to hostile nation states that could offer him safe harbor and attempt to facilitate his escape from the United States,” whereas his attorneys said he should be released even if it means imposing restrictions on him.
The prosecutors’ filing also said, “No condition or combination of conditions will reasonably ensure that the Defendant does not flee, and that the Defendant would not take further steps to obstruct justice, including through the destruction of evidence or other action that would further endanger the U.S. national security or the physical safety of his community,” even though Teixeira’s father, also named Jack, told the court he would report his son to law enforcement if he were to break his conditions of release.
Teixeira’s attorneys argued their client didn’t intend for the top-secret documents to be shared outside of his private Discord forum, while the judge said to their argument, “I find it a little incredible that the defendant could not foresee that possibility.”
The national guardsman was charged last month under the Espionage Act with unauthorized retention and transmission of national defense information and unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material after the documents started surfacing.
Teixeira was allegedly copying classified information and then began printing it out, taking it home, and photographing it before sharing it with a group of roughly 20-30 people in a group chat on the platform Discord. He had supposedly been doing this for months, but it was only uncovered when someone from the group began posting them on other social media platforms, which is where they then surfaced in early April.
But Teixeira seemingly knew authorities were closing in on identifying him as the apparent source of the leak, according to prosecutors, who accused him of destroying evidence and encouraging others to do the same.
When law enforcement officers searched a nearby dumpster after his arrest, they discovered a tablet, a laptop, an iPhone box for a new phone, and an Xbox gaming console, all of which had been smashed, according to the motion, while he allegedly told members of the Discord channel to “delete all messages,” and “If anyone comes looking, don’t tell them s***.”
The discovery of the leaked documents happened in a slow trickle, with more seemingly uncovered still to this day.
U.S. officials were forced to have difficult conversations with allies after the leaks provided insights into the reach of the U.S. intelligence community that were not meant for public knowledge. The leaks also provided snapshots of the war in Ukraine.
The Pentagon and Air Force launched investigations into the leaks, their impact on U.S. relations, and whether there should be procedural changes regarding the dissemination of and access to classified military information. The Air Force suspended both the commander and the detachment commander overseeing administrative support of Teixeira’s unit, the 102nd Intelligence Wing at Otis Air National Guard Base in Massachusetts.
Questions have emerged as to how the accused was able to gain his position in the military and have a “top secret” and “sensitive compartmented information,” or TS/SCI, security clearance, which he got in 2021.
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Teixeira was suspended in high school for comments a classmate overheard him make “about weapons, including Molotov cocktails, guns at the school, and racial threats,” according to a pretrial motion filed by prosecutors, though he said those remarks were a reference to a video game in a pretrial interview.
The same year he served the suspension, 2018, local police denied his application for a firearms identification card due to the comments. He applied again in 2019 and for a third time in 2020, citing his job with the military “as a reason he could be trusted to possess a firearm,” the motion said.