The Massachusetts Air National Guard serviceman charged with leaking highly sensitive military secrets to an online forum dedicated largely to the gaming community has been ordered detained ahead of trial.
Jack Teixeira, 21, of North Dighton, was charged by criminal complaint on April 14 with unauthorized retention and transmission of national defense information and unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material.
He finally appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge David H. Hennessy in federal court in Worcester Friday for the detention hearing that had been rescheduled many times.
“I am going to grant the government’s request for detention,” Hennessy said before explaining his reasoning.
“I understand it smacks of a spy novel,” Hennessy said, “But I believe the government has the better argument here.”
“In some ways it doesn’t seem implausible at all that foreign government would make an overture to him for information.”
Teixeira was escorted into court at precisely 3:30 p.m. with a buzzed head and orange Plymouth County Correctional Facility scrubs. He offered a brief smile to family seated in the front row before taking a seat at the defense table.
Hennessy said he was also concerned over “the defendant’s lack of integrity” as Teixeira had on many past occasions shown that he does not honor his words, as exemplified by continuing to copy and share secret documents despite signing a non-disclosure agreement
Attorneys for each side issued competing memos to Hennessy on Wednesday arguing why Teixeira should be either detained or released ahead of his future trial.
Another concern Hennessy expressed is a more direct concern for the safety of the community by this person possibly looking at a lengthy life behind bars if convicted, due to a documented “fascination with guns,” though he said he agreed with the defense’s contention that this doesn’t in itself mean anything, as “some people like guns, some people like coins, stamps, or automobiles. There’s nothing wrong with that.
But in Teixeira’s case, Hennessy said, “there seems to be something unhealthy” about Teixeira’s fascination with them, including a high school incident that made it so Teixeira could not obtain a firearm license. Hennessy shared an online conversation Teixeira had had at that time in which he imagined converting a van into a stationary gun stand in which he could shoot down targets in a crowded urban or suburban environment.
On the other hand, Hennessy said, Teixeira’s family ties “are, in my experience, remarkable” and that Teixeira’s family members have been there for every hearing — and, indeed, walk through a gauntlet of media at the close of each hearing, but offer no comment as they did once again on Friday — and had even offered up their own property as collateral for Teixeira’s return to court.
Defense attorneys Brendan Kelley and Allen Franco, both of the Federal Public Defender Office in Boston, released an exhibit attached to their latest memo that includes eight other Espionage Act cases in which judges either approved release of the defendants or prosecutors did not seek detention.
“The Bail Reform Act demands individual determinations of course, and there have been other cases in which courts imposed pretrial detention. Nevertheless, these cases plainly demonstrate that there are release conditions available in Espionage Act cases, even in cases where courts held similar concerns,” the defense attorneys summarized.
They also said that Teixeira had been unfairly compared to Edward Snowden — the National Security Agency contractor who in 2013 leaked information pertaining to the agency’s PRISM operation of warrantless information gathering on U.S. citizens.
In contrast to Snowden, they wrote, their client did not flee and seek asylum in another country but, instead, “when news broke relating to Mr. Teixeira, he remained at his mother’s home and peacefully submitted to arrest upon the arrival of law enforcement.”
Conversely, federal prosecutors say that the information they have gathered on Teixeira and his alleged leak operation has only strengthened and show signs he could be a major national security threat if released ahead of trial.
“In short, the weight of the evidence against the Defendant has only grown stronger, and the risks the Defendant poses if released have only come into sharper focus,” assistant U.S. Attorneys Nadine Pelligrini, Jared Dolan and Jason Casey and Christina Clark, a trial attorney with the U.S. Attorney General’s office, wrote in their memo on the state of their investigation since Teixeira’s last court appearance on April 27.
They wrote that the defense had tried to “minimize the Defendant’s criminal activities” through means like describing the online community he allegedly spread these materials — which is a “server” on the forum website Discord, as the Herald has reported — as a “small private online community.”
They say the forum was made up of at least 150 users at the time spread across multiple countries and that while spreading this information “to even one person not entitled to receive it could cause exceptionally grave damage to the U.S. national security.”
Further, they say his attitude is not conducive toward release. For example, they say that on Jan. 4, Teixeira wrote in the group “theres gonna be a (expletive) ton of information here,” before he described job duties far in excess of his actual position. He allegedly also wrote “none of this is public information,” which prosecutors say he understood sharing this information was unlawful.
He was purportedly scolded by superiors for taking notes on information he wasn’t privy to and yet, as the Herald has reported, continued this activity even after being directed to stop.
On Dec. 6, 2022, prosecutors wrote, he shared with the group that he was “breaking a ton of UD (unauthorized disclosure) regs” but that “Idgaf what they say I can or can’t share,” with the initialism at the beginning standing for “I don’t give a (expletive).”
