A Massachusetts Air National Guard officer accused of leaking classified military documents has kept an arsenal of weapons at home and posted information about “violence and murder” on social media. This is reported in accusatory documents prepared by prosecutors ahead of the hearing in the case of 21-year-old Jack Teixeira.
The court records raise new questions about why Teixeira had such a high level of clearance and, in particular, why he had access to some of the documents kept under “Top Secret”.
Teixeira may still have documents that have not been made public, prosecutors said. The document stresses that this information is “of considerable value to hostile states which may offer him asylum and facilitate his escape from the United States”.
Teixeira continues to pose a major threat to national security and may attempt to flee, prosecutors said. Investigators are investigating whether he kept physical or digital copies of classified information, including files that have not yet been released online.
“The damage that the accused has already caused to the national security of the United States is enormous. The harm the defendant is still capable of causing is extraordinary,” the court filing reads.
Teixeira was charged under the Espionage Act with unauthorized possession and transmission of classified national defense information. Until he pleads guilty.
Teixeira’s lawyers are urging the judge to release him from jail, arguing in documents filed last Thursday that conditions could be created to do so.
The defense said Teixeira no longer had access to any top secret information.
He is accused of having disseminated highly classified documents on national security issues in a chat on the social network Discord. The leak stunned the military leadership, caused an international outcry and many questions about the protection of military secrets.
Prosecutors also said Teixeira, who wielded multiple weapons, repeatedly engaged in ‘detailed and disturbing discussions about the violence and killings’ on the platform where authorities say he posted the documents. . He told another man in February that he was tempted to turn his van into a “murderous pickup truck”, prosecutors said.
The Justice Department documents outline a pattern that prosecutors say Teixeira developed long before he joined the military and has continued in recent months, even as his position gave him access to government secrets.
In 2018, prosecutors say, Teixeira was suspended from school after a classmate “heard him talking about guns, Molotov cocktails, carrying guns at school and making threats. racial”. His first firearms license application the same year was denied due to police department concerns about the above remarks.
The Justice Department said the investigation found Teixeira used his government computer in July to search for information about mass shootings in the United States, including the search terms “Las Vegas shooting”, “Mandalay Bay shooting”, “Uvalde” and “shooting in Buffalo”.
Teixeira’s lawyers noted that he had no criminal record and would not have access to a weapon if released. The incident at school was ‘thoroughly investigated’ and he was allowed to return to school a few days later, they said. According to them, this investigation was “fully known and verified” by the Air National Guard unit before Teixeira entered the service and received a security clearance.
After news agencies began reporting leaked documents, Teixeira took steps to destroy the evidence. As stated in the indictment, following a check of the contents of a dumpster in Teixeira’s home, a broken laptop, tablet and Xbox game console were found.
Teixeira’s motives have yet to be reported. Members of the group on the Discord platform describe him as a person prone to bragging, but not seeking to inform the public about military operations or influence the course of political events.
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