Justice Dept. urges pretrial detention for accused Pentagon leaker

April 27 (UPI) -- The 21-year-old Air National guardsman accused of leaking classified military documents faces a hearing Thursday to determine whether he will remain in federal custody while awaiting trial on national security violations.

Jack Teixeira is a flight risk and should remain jailed without bond after he was charged two weeks ago with unauthorized retention and transmission of national defense information and unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material, the Justice Department argued in an 18-page memo filed Wednesday with the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts.

"The damage the defendant has already caused to the U.S. national security is immense. The damage the defendant is still capable of causing is extraordinary," prosecutors wrote.

"If the defendant were released, it would be all too easy for him to further disseminate classified information and would create the unacceptable risk that he would flee the United States and take refuge with a foreign adversary to avoid the reach of U.S. law."

Thursday's hearing comes after Teixeira's attorney was granted a weeklong delay to work out issues presented by prosecutors in their judicial request to keep Teixeira locked up.

He faces a minimum of 25 years in prison and "potentially far more," the Justice Department said, noting the extreme pressure of the case and his lack of finances could expose Teixeira to foreign agents seeking to sneak him out of the country.

Teixeira would prove to be a valuable asset to U.S. adversaries worldwide as he was likely still hiding a cache of U.S. secrets, the Justice Department said.

"He accessed and may still have access to a trove of classified information that would be of tremendous value to hostile nation states that could offer him safe harbor and attempt to facilitate his escape from the United States," the memo said.

"Those same adversaries have every incentive to contact the defendant, to seek additional information he may have physical access to or knowledge of, and to provide him with the means to help him flee the country in return for that information."

As an airman first-class assigned to the 102nd Intelligence Wing at Otis Air National Guard Base, Mass., Teixeira had access to "hundreds of classified documents" since February 2022, prosecutors said, even though the top-secret information "had no bearing on his role as essentially an information technology support specialist."

Teirxeira worked in government intelligence as a cyberdefense operations journeyman, giving him access to the top-secret documents that first appeared on the social gaming platform Discord, which Teixeira regularly used, as early as December.

The documents revealed covert information about pressing national security matters, including Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but the military was unaware of the leak for months before it launched an investigation on April 7.

Teixeira was taken into custody on April 13 by the FBI outside his mother's home in Massachusetts, where he lived. Inside, investigators found a laptop, a tablet and a gaming console destroyed, and a gun locker containing an arsenal of high-powered weapons and tactical gear.

The case sparked outrage in Washington and raised serious questions about the way classified materials are safeguarded.

When the leak first came to light in media reports, federal authorities said Teixeira attempted to cover his tracks to throw off investigators, while instructing members of his group chats to "delete all messages."

Prosecutors have also submitted into evidence more than 40,000 messages that Teixeira sent to others about the documents, including a March conversation in which he offered national secrets to his pals on Discord.

"If you guys do you want happenings that pertain to your country or events or politics or whatever, you can DM me and I can tell you what I have, but it's going to always be a brief summary," one of the messages read, according to authorities.

The memo also calls out Teixeira's history of making violent and racist comments online, adding that he was suspended from high school in 2018 after a classmate reported him for bragging about guns and Molotov cocktails -- which he later claimed were references to video games -- and ultimately led to him being denied a gun permit in the state.

Messages also revealed that Teixeira had discussed his potential to carry out a mass casualty event, which included an alleged plan to convert a minivan into an "assassination van," prosecutors wrote.

Teixeira had also used his government-issued computer last summer for numerous searches on mass shootings following the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in which 21 people were killed, including 19 children.