The Massachusetts Air National guardsman accused of leaking highly classified US military documents kept an arsenal of guns and said on social media that he would like to kill a "ton of people," prosecutors said in arguing he should remain jail for his trial. 

• The judge put off making a decision on whether Jack Teixeira should remain in custody before his trial
• The judge could also order he be confined at his father's home or be conditionally released
• But prosecutors argue he is a threat to national security and a flight risk

But the judge at 21-year-old Jack Teixeira hearing put off an immediate decision on whether he should be kept in custody until his trial or released to home confinement or under other conditions.

Mr Teixeira was led away from the court in handcuffs, black rosary beads around his neck, pending that ruling.

The court filings raise new questions about why Mr Teixeira had such a high security clearance and access to some of the nation's most classified secrets.

They said he may still have material that hasn't been released, which could be of "tremendous value to hostile nation states that could offer him safe harbour and attempt to facilitate his escape from the United States".

In Mr Teixeira's detention hearing, Magistrate Judge David Hennessy expressed skepticism of defence arguments that the government hasn't alleged Mr Teixeira intended leaked information to be widely disseminated.

"Somebody under the age of 30 has no idea that when they put something on the internet that it could end up anywhere in this world?" the judge asked. "Seriously?"

His handcuffs were removed before he sat down and put back on when he was taken out.

The judge could order Mr Teixeira to be confined at his father's home or conditionally released while awaiting trial, if not held in jail.

"You have a young man before you who didn't flee, has nowhere to flee," said Brendan Kelley, the defendant's lawyer.

"He will answer the charges, he will be judged by his fellow citizens."

But Nadine Pellegrini from the Massachusetts US attorney's office told the judge the information prosecutors submitted to the court about the defendant's threatening words and behaviour "is not speculation, it is not hyperbole, nor is it the creation of a caricature. It is … directly based upon the words and actions of this defendant".

The defence asserted Mr Teixeira no longer has access to any top-secret information and had accused prosecutors of providing "little more than speculation that a foreign adversary will seduce Mr Teixeira and orchestrate his clandestine escape from the United States".

The prosecution's filing reviews what it says are Mr Teixeira social media posts, stating in November that he would "kill a [expletive] ton of people" if he had his way, because it would be "culling the weak minded".

Court papers urging a federal judge to keep Mr Teixeira in custody detailed a troubling history going back to high school, where he was suspended when a classmate overheard him discussing Molotov cocktails and other weapons as well as racial threats.

More recently, prosecutors said, he used his government computer to research past mass shootings and stand-offs with federal agents.

He remains a grave threat to national security and a flight risk, prosecutors wrote.

Investigators are still trying to determine whether he kept any physical or digital copies of classified information that hasn't surfaced yet.

"There simply is no condition or combination of conditions that can ensure the defendant will not further disclose additional information still in his knowledge or possession," prosecutors wrote.

"The damage the defendant has already caused to the US national security is immense. The damage the defendant is still capable of causing is extraordinary."

Mr Teixeira has been in jail since his arrest this month on charges stemming from the most consequential intelligence leak in years.

Mr Teixeira has been charged under the Espionage Act with unauthorised retention and transmission of classified national defence information.

He has not yet entered a plea.

His lawyers argued in court papers that appropriate conditions can be set for his release even if the court finds him to be a flight risk — such as confinement at his father's home and location monitoring.

"The government's allegations … offer no support that Mr Teixeira currently, or ever, intended any information purportedly to the private social media server to be widely disseminated," they wrote.

"Thus, its argument that Mr Teixeira will continue to release information or destroy evidence if not detained rings hollow."

Prosecutors wrote that he kept his gun locker within reach of his bed and in it were handguns, bolt-action rifles, shotguns, an AK-style high-capacity weapon and a gas mask.

Ammunition and tactical pouches were found on his dresser, they said.

He is accused of distributing highly classified documents about top national security issues in a chat room on Discord, a social media platform that started as a hangout for gamers.

The leak stunned military officials, sparked an international uproar and raised fresh questions about America's ability to safeguard its secrets.

The leaked documents appear to detail US and NATO aid to Ukraine and US intelligence assessments regarding US 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 lost and newly flowing into Ukraine from its allies.

Prosecutors wrote that Mr Teixeira repeatedly had "detailed and troubling discussions about violence and murder" on the platform where authorities say he shared the documents.

In February, he told another person that he was tempted to make a mini-van into an "assassination van," prosecutors wrote.

In 2018, they allege, Mr Teixeira was suspended after a classmate "overheard him make remarks about weapons, including Molotov cocktails, guns at the school, and racial threats."

His initial application for a firearms identification card that same year was denied due to police concerns over those remarks.

The Justice Department said it also learned through its investigation that Mr Teixeira used his government computer in July to look up mass shootings and government stand-offs, including the terms "Ruby Ridge," "Las Vegas shooting," "Mandalay Bay shooting," "Uvalde" and "Buffalo tops shooting" — an apparent reference to the 2022 racist mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket.

Those searches should have triggered the computer to generate an immediate referral to security, which could have then led to a more in-depth review of Mr Teixeira's file, according to Dan Meyer, a lawyer who specialises in security clearance issues.

The Air Force's investigation will probably discover whether a referral was generated — and whether security officers did anything with the information.

The Air Force has suspended the commander of the 102nd Intelligence Support Squadron where Mr Teixeira worked and an administrative commander until further investigation.

Pentagon spokesman Air Force Brigadier general Pat Ryder wouldn't discuss the specifics of Mr Teixeira's case.

"We do want to allow the investigation to run its course," General Ryder said.

Mr Teixeira's lawyers said he has no criminal history.

The incident at his high school was "thoroughly investigated" and he was allowed to come back after a few days and a psychological evaluation, they wrote.

That investigation was "fully known and vetted " by the Air National Guard before he enlisted and when he obtained his top-secret security clearance, they said.

Months later, after news outlets began reporting on the documents leak, Mr Teixeira took steps to destroy evidence.

Authorities who searched a dumpster at his home found a smashed laptop, tablet and Xbox gaming console, they said.

Authorities have not alleged a motive.

Members of the Discord group have described Mr Teixeira as someone who wanted to show off rather than inform the public about military operations or influence US policy.

Billing records the FBI obtained from Discord helped lead authorities to Mr Teixeira, who enlisted in the Air National Guard in September 2019.

A Discord user told the FBI that a username linked to Mr Teixeira began posting what appeared to be classified information roughly in December.

AP

READ MORE:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-28/prosecutors-say-leak-suspect-jack-teixeira-wanted-to-kill-a-ton/102279294

WOW! THIS KID IS SERIOUSLY SICK....

HOW DID HE OFFICIALLY COME TO BE IN POSSESSION OF TOP SECRET DOCUMENTS?

YES WE KNOW, THE DEPARTMENT OF LEAKS IN THE USA HAD RUN OUT OF YOUNG MEN READY TO DO THE DIRTY ON THE EMPIRE WHEN THE EMPIRE NEEDS A SAFETY VALVE TO PREVENT A NUKE WAR... SO TEXEIRA IS IT... DON'T TELL ME THAT THEY EMPLOY THIS PART-TIME GUY TO DO GRAPHIC RENDITIONS OF TOP SECRET BIZO WITHOUT CHECKING UNDER HIS BED?

YES I KNOW, THEY DO... THIS IS THE DEPARTMENT OF TOP SECRET LEAKS, STAMPED "APPROVED FOR LEAKING" IN INVISIBLE INK... NOTHING NEW. THIS KID WAS EVEN TOO DUMB TO DO A DECENT JOB AT LEAKING... HE KNEW THIS AND DID NOT RESIST ARREST... ANY CONSPIRATIONISTS THAT VALUED THEIR LIFE WOULD HAVE SHOT THEMSELVES — INSTEAD OF YET CROWDING ANOTHER COURT WITH A DUMB SELECTION OF HIS OWN PEERS TO BE JUDGED AND THEN VANISHED... 

IT LOOKS LIKE THE DEPARTMENT OF LEAKS PICKED THE RIGHT KID ON THE PALETTE: THE DUMBEST ONE.

MEANWHILE:

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....

 SEE ALSO: https://www.rt.com/news/575461-pentagon-leaker-security-clearance/

by peter van buren

Why hasn’t the US government arrested WaPo journalist Shane Harris for publishing highly classified documents related to the war in Ukraine and US spying on its allies? The ones leaked by Air national Guardsman Jack Teixeira?

The documents contain significant revelations. Among other secrets, they show the CIA recruited human agents privy to the closed-door conversations of world leaders, reveal eavesdropping that shows a Russian mercenary outfit tried to acquire weapons from NATO ally Turkey to use against Ukraine, explained what kind of satellite imagery the United States uses to track Russian forces, and made clear US and NATO have special forces on the ground inside Ukraine.

Why Shane Harris is not in jail has a long history, and a complex answer. In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers, a secret US government-written history of the Vietnam War, to the New York Times. No one had ever published such classified documents before, and reporters at the Times feared they would go to jail under the Espionage Act (the same law under which Jack Teixeira is charged.) A federal court ordered the Times to cease publication after initial excerpts were printed, the first time in US history a federal judge censored a newspaper via prior restraint. In the end, the Supreme Court reversed the lower courts and handed down a victory for the First Amendment in New York Times Company v. United States. The Times won the Pulitzer Prize. Ever since media have published national security secrets as they found them.

Law professor Steve Vladeck points out “although the First Amendment separately protects the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press, the Supreme Court has long refused to give any separate substantive content to the Press Clause above and apart from the Speech Clause. The Supreme Court has never suggested that the First Amendment might protect a right to disclose national security information. Yes, the Pentagon Papers case rejected a government effort to enjoin publication, but several of the Justices in their separate opinions specifically suggested that the government could prosecute the New York Times and the Washington Post after publication, under the Espionage Act.”

The Supreme Court left the door open for the prosecution of journalists who publish classified documents by focusing narrowly on prohibiting prior restraint. Politics and public opinion, not law, has since kept the feds exercising discretion in not prosecuting the press, a delicate dance around an 800-pound gorilla loose in the halls of democracy.

The closest an American journalist ever came to being thrown in jail was in 2014, when the Obama administration subpoenaed New York Times reporter James Risen. They then accused former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling of passing classified information to Risen. After a lower court ordered Risen to testify and disclose his source under threat of jail, the Supreme Court turned down his appeal, siding with the government in a confrontation between a national security prosecution and an infringement of press freedom. The Supreme Court refused to consider whether the First Amendment implied a “reporter’s privilege,” an undocumented protection beneath the handful of words in the Free Press Clause.

In the end, the Obama administration, fearful of public opinion, punted on Risen and set precedent extra-judicially. Waving a patriotic flag over a messy situation, then-attorney general Eric Holder announced that “no reporter who is doing his job is going to go to jail.” Risen wasn’t called to testify and wasn’t punished for publishing classified material, even as the alleged leaker, Jeffrey Sterling, disappeared into prison for three and a half years. To avoid creating a precedent that might have granted some form of reporter’s privilege under the Constitution, the government set a different precedent and stepped away from the fight. That’s why Shane Harris of the Washington Post isn’t under arrest right now. For traditional media American journalists like Shane Harris, the Risen case was a turning point.

Meanwhile Wikileaks’ Julian Assange is under arrest, rotting away in his fifth year in a UK prison fighting extradition to the United States. There are complex legal questions to be answered about who is a journalist and what is publishing in the digital world — is Assange himself a journalist like Risen or a source for journalists like Sterling was alleged to be? There is no debate over whether James Risen is a journalist and whether a book is publishing. Glenn Greenwald has written about and published online classified documents given to him by Edward Snowden, and has never been challenged by the government as a journalist or publisher.

Assange isn’t an American, so he is vulnerable. He is unpopular, drawn into America’s 21st-century Red Scare for revealing the DNC emails. He has written nothing alongside the primary source documents on Wikileaks, has apparently done little curating or culling, and has redacted little. Publishing for him consists of uploading what has been supplied. The government would argue Assange is not entitled to First Amendment protections simply by claiming that a mouse click and some web code isn’t publishing and Assange isn’t a journalist. The simplest interpretation of 18 USC. § 793(e) of the Espionage Act, that Assange willfully transmitted information relating to national defense without authorization, would apply. He would be guilty, same as the other canaries in the deep mine shaft of Washington before him, no messy balancing questions to be addressed. And with that, a unique form of online primary source journalism would be made extinct.

And that really, really matters. Wikileaks sidestepped the restraints of traditional journalism to bring the raw material of history to the people. Never mind whether or not a court determined disclosure of secret NSA programs which spied on Americans disclosure was truly in the public interest. Never mind the New York Times gets a phone call from the President and decides not to publish something. Never mind how senior government officials are allowed to selectively leak information helpful to themselves. Never mind what parts of an anonymous technical disclosure a reporter understood well enough to write about, here are the cables, the memos, the emails, the archives themselves. Others can write summaries and interpretations if they wish (and nearly every mainstream media outlet has used Wikileaks to do that, some even while calling Assange and his sources traitors), or you as an individual can simply read the stuff yourself and make up your own damn mind about what the government is doing. Fact checks? There are the facts themselves in front of you. That is the root of an informed public, through a set of tools and freedoms never before available until the internet created them.

Allowing these new tools to be broken over the meaning of the words journalist and publishing will stifle all of what’s left of the press. If Assange becomes the first successful prosecution of a third party under the Espionage Act, the government can then turn that precedent into a weapon to aggressively attack the media’s role in national security leaks. Is a reporter, for example, publishing a Signal number in fact soliciting people to commit national security felonies? Will media employees have to weigh for themselves the potential public interest, hoping to avoid prosecution if they differ from the government’s opinion? The Assange case may prove to be the topper in a long-running war of attrition against free speech.

Reprinted with permission from WeMeantWell.com.

READ MORE:

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2023/april/29/why-hasn-t-the-us-arrested-wapo-journalist-for-publishing-classified-documents/

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