Pentagon leak suspect Jack Teixeira expected to plead guilty in federal case

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Jack Teixeira, the Massachusetts Air National Guard member accused of leaking extremely categorized army paperwork on a social media platform, is expected to plead guilty in his federal case, in accordance to court docket papers filed Thursday.

Prosecutors requested the decide to schedule a change of plea listening to for Monday, however no different particulars have been instantly out there. Teixeira had beforehand pleaded not guilty.

The Massachusetts U.S. legal professional’s workplace declined additional remark. An legal professional for Teixeira did not instantly return a cellphone message Thursday.

Teixeira, of North Dighton, Massachusetts, has been behind bars since his April arrest for a leak that left the Biden administration scrambling to assess and include the injury among the many worldwide group and reassure allies that its secrets and techniques are protected with the U.S.

Teixeira was indicted on six counts of willful retention and transmission of nationwide protection data.

He was accused of sharing categorized army paperwork about Russia’s struggle in Ukraine and different delicate nationwide safety matters on Discord, a social media platform common with individuals who play on-line video games. Investigators consider he led a personal chat group known as Thug Shaker Central, the place fanatics shared jokes, talked about their favourite varieties of weapons and mentioned wars, together with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Authorities say Teixeira, who enlisted in the Air National Guard in 2019, started round January sharing army secrets and techniques with different Discord customers — first by typing out categorized paperwork after which sharing pictures of information that bore SECRET and TOP SECRET markings. Teixeira labored as a “cyber transport systems specialist,” primarily an IT specialist answerable for army communications networks.

Authorities have mentioned that Teixeira was detected on April 6 — the day The New York Times first revealed a narrative in regards to the breach of paperwork — looking for the phrase “leak” in a categorized system. The FBI says that was cause to consider Teixeira was making an attempt to discover details about the investigation into who was answerable for the leaks.

Billing data the FBI subsequently obtained from Discord helped lead investigators to Teixeira.

Prosecutors say he continued to leak authorities secrets and techniques even after he was warned by superiors about mishandling and improper viewing of categorized data. After being admonished by superiors final 12 months, he was once more seen in February viewing data not associated to the intelligence subject, not his main responsibility, in accordance to inside Air National Guard memos filed in court docket.

Authorities have offered few particulars about an alleged doable motive, however accounts of these in the net personal chat group the place the paperwork have been disclosed have depicted Teixeira as motivated extra by bravado than ideology.

Prosecutors had urged the decide to hold Teixeira jailed whereas the case performed, in half due to an arsenal of weapons discovered at his house and his historical past of disturbing on-line statements. They included one social media put up from final November saying that, if he had his method, he would really like to kill a “ton of people” as a result of it might be “culling the weak minded.”

In urgent for his or her shopper to be free of jail, Teixeira’s attorneys pointed to the pretrial launch of former President Donald Trump and others in high-profile categorized paperwork instances. Teixeira’s attorneys famous that prosecutors didn’t search to detain Trump — or his co-defendant, Walt Nauta — regardless that they mentioned the previous president and his valet “possess extraordinary means to flee the United States.”

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani final 12 months denied Teixeira’s bid for launch, saying “No set of release conditions will reasonably assure the safety of the community, or prevent destruction of evidence.”