Pentagon leaks suspect was warned off viewing classified material – prosecutors
Jack Teixeira, the US air national guard member charged with being behind the so-called Pentagon leaks of highly classified military documents, was warned repeatedly over his mishandling of classified material, according to a court filing.
Justice department lawyers made the disclosure in court papers that urged Teixeira be kept behind bars while he awaits trial in the case stemming from the most consequential intelligence leak in years. The judge is expected to hear more arguments on Friday before issuing a ruling.
Teixeira is accused of sharing highly classified documents about top national security issues in a chatroom on Discord, a social media platform that started as a hangout for gamers. He has not yet entered a plea.
Prosecutors allege that Teixeira continued leaking documents even after he was rebuked on two separate occasions last year due to his “concerning actions” related to classified information that were observed by superiors.
A memo from September 2022 states that Teixeira had been seen taking notes on classified intelligence information and putting the notes in his pocket. Teixeira was instructed at the time to no longer take notes in any form on classified intelligence information, the memo says.
Another memo from late October says that Teixeira was “potentially ignoring the cease-and-desist order on deep diving into intelligence information” given to him the month before. The memo says Teixeira attended a meeting and proceeded to ask “very specific questions”. He was told again to focus on his job, not any “deep dives” into classified intelligence information.
A third memo from February this year says Teixeira was observed viewing information “that was not related to his primary duty and was related to the intelligence field”. Teixeira “had previously been notified to focus on his own career duties and to not seek out intelligence products”, the memo said.
“The Defendant even continued to share information with his online associates, defying these admonishments and taking further efforts to conceal his unlawful conduct,” prosecutors wrote.
Lawyers for Teixeira, who was arrested last month on charges under the Espionage Act, are urging the judge to release Teixeira to his father’s home, noting that the man didn’t flee when media outlets began publishing his name shortly before his 13 April arrest.
His lawyer told the judge last month that Teixeira “will answer the charges” and “will be judged by his fellow citizens”.
In their own court filing on Wednesday, Teixeira’s lawyers noted there have been many Espionage Act cases in which courts have approved release, or the government did not seek to keep the person behind bars pretrial. They have also said there is no allegation that Teixeira ever intended for documents to be distributed widely.
But prosecutors said in their filing that one of the servers on the social media platform he posted classified information to had at least 150 users at the time the information was shared and “now may have many more users that are actively seeking access to information”.
“Among the individuals with whom the Defendant shared government information are a number of individuals who represented that they resided in other countries and who logged on to the social media platform using foreign IP addresses,” prosecutors wrote.
In messages, Teixeira bragged about the scope of information he had access to, writing, “The information I give here is less than half of what’s available,” prosecutors said. He also acknowledged he wasn’t supposed to be sharing the information, prosecutors said, writing in another message, “All of the s--I’ve told you guys I’m not supposed to,” according to the Justice Department’s filing.
In earlier court records, prosecutors revealed that Teixeira kept an arsenal of weapons before his arrest and has a history of violent and disturbing remarks.
The leaked documents appear to detail US and Nato aid to Ukraine and US intelligence assessments regarding allies that could strain ties with those nations. Some show real-time details from February and March of Ukraine’s and Russia’s battlefield positions and precise numbers of battlefield gear flowing into Ukraine from its allies.