Global Courant 2023-04-19 14:05:27
The hearing will determine whether he should remain in federal custody.
The Massachusetts Air National Guardsman, accused of leaking national defense information online, is due back in federal court in Boston on Wednesday for a hearing to determine whether he should remain in federal custody.
Jack Teixeira, 21, “improperly and unlawfully withheld and passed on national defense information to people not authorized to receive it,” according to a criminal indictment unsealed last week following his arrest at his home in North Dighton, Massachusetts.
He has been in custody since his arrest after the FBI said he caused “serious harm to the national security of the United States”. In his first appearance, Teixeira’s court-appointed attorney for the Federal Defenders of Boston did not object to his detention pending the outcome of Wednesday’s hearing.
Jack Teixeira, the suspected leaker of classified documents and the U.S. National Guard, is taken into custody by FBI agents in North Dighton, Mass. April 13, 2023.
WCVB
According to the complaint, Teixeira began posting classified information to Discord in December.
Initially, the material appeared as paragraphs of text. When Teixeira reportedly became concerned that he was copying material at work, “he began taking the documents to his residence and photographing them,” the complaint said.
In addition to a detention hearing, Wednesday is also being announced as a preliminary hearing, an indication that the judge could lay out the progress of the case, including whether it moves from the District of Massachusetts to the Eastern District of Virginia, where it may eventually be prosecuted because much of what was leaked came from the Pentagon.
Teixeira has yet to plead the charges.
