The Air National Guardsman accused of posting a trove of classified documents to social media will be back in court Wednesday for a hearing on whether he will be kept in jail.
Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, is accused of posting classified intelligence – including sensitive information on the war in Ukraine – on the social media site Discord in a series of leaks that revealed the scope of US intelligence gathering on both its allies and adversaries.
On Wednesday, a judge will decide whether Teixeira should continue to be detained as he faces charges under the Espionage Act.
Prosecutors are expected to argue to a judge that Teixeira should stay behind bars during the course of his legal case. As part of their argument, prosecutors may disclose more details about Teixeira’s alleged actions to convince Magistrate Judge David Hennessy that Teixeira is either too dangerous to be released or that he poses a flight risk.
Teixeira has not yet entered a plea. He was arrested by the FBI last Thursday following a furious scramble by federal authorities to determine the identity of the leaker following reports that the classified documents had been sitting in a Discord chatroom.
Teixeira, an airman first class, was stationed at Otis Air National Guard Base in Massachusetts, where he worked on a classified computer network. He obtained a top secret security clearance in 2021.
According to charging documents, Teixeira began posting classified information to the Discord chatroom in December 2022, and he began uploading photos of the classified documents in January 2023.
The fact that the documents sat online for months before being discovered has revived questions about how classified information is handled across the government.
The Pentagon has limited access to classified…
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