United States prosecutors have accused the Air National Guardsman of leaking classified Pentagon files of keeping an “arsenal of weapons” and making violent threats online, arguing that Jack Teixeira should remain in custody pending trial .
In a lawsuit filed late Wednesday, authorities said Teixeira, 21, may still have access to classified documents and would pose a “serious flight risk” if released on bail.
At a court hearing on Thursday, a US federal judge did not immediately rule on whether Teixeira should remain in custody or be paroled.
However, Judge David Hennessy expressed concern that the 21-year-old’s knowledge of classified material could be valuable to a foreign government, noting that the defendant had copied some documents and may still remember the classified information “fairly well”.
Charged with the unauthorized disclosure of classified national defense information in violation of the Espionage Act, Teixeira faces 25 years in prison “and possibly much more,” prosecutors said.
“He has accessed and may still have access to a wealth of classified information that would be of immense value to hostile nation-states that could provide him with a safe haven and attempt to facilitate his escape from the United States” , reads their lawsuit.
Teixeira’s defense rejected the government’s characterization of their client, calling the prosecution’s assessment “hyperbolic” and insisting that he no longer has access to classified documents.
“The government’s supplemental motion for detention is in many ways related to hyperbolic judgments and offers little more than speculation that a foreign adversary will seduce Mr. Teixeira and orchestrate his clandestine escape from the United States. This argument is an illusion,” the defense said in a court case Thursday.
At the hearing later that day, Hennessy expressed skepticism about the defense’s arguments that the prosecution had failed to demonstrate that Teixeira had ever intended to widely distribute the leaked information.
“Doesn’t anyone under 30 have any idea that when they put something on the internet, it could end up anywhere in the world?” asked the judge. “Serious?”
Defense attorneys asked Teixeira to be released to his father’s home on $20,000 bail under conditions that would restrict his movement and access to the Internet.
The files Teixeira allegedly leaked have been described by pundits and officials as a threat to US national security. They include details of Western military support for Ukraine, information on Russia’s war effort, and intelligence collected from allied states.
Officials have said Teixeira, who served in the Massachusetts Air Force National Guard, shared the information with members of a Discord server to “discuss geopolitical matters and current and historic wars.”
Teixeira’s age and lower rank have raised questions about why he had access to top secret information and how he managed to leak the documents for weeks without being discovered. Many members of Congress have pledged to seek answers on the matter.
Teixeira, who was arrested earlier this month in the small town of North Dighton, Massachusetts, made threatening comments related to guns and murder online, according to Wednesday’s court prosecutor.
“In November 2022, the defendant stated that if he had his way, he would ‘a [expletive] tons of people” because it would “clear the feeble-minded,” the prosecutors wrote.
They also said he was suspended from high school in 2018 for “comments about guns, including Molotov cocktails, guns in school, and racist threats.”
Prosecutors added that authorities had found a “virtual arsenal of weapons” in Teixeira’s main and secondary residences – his mother’s and father’s homes – including “bolt rifles, rifles, AR and AK style weapons and a bazooka” .
However, the Teixeira defense team stressed that the weapons were “lawfully owned and properly stored”.
The defendant’s lawyers also tried to dismiss his online threats and high school suspension, saying he had not committed “any act of violence”.
“The high school incident was thoroughly investigated and he was allowed back to school within days, after undergoing a professional psychiatric evaluation,” they wrote.