Massachusetts Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira, 21, faces two counts under the Espionage Act for allegedly leaking classified documents over a game chat server.
Teixeira did not enter a plea. The judge order he remain detained “pending a detention hearing set for Wednesday, April 19.”
FBI Agent Patrick Lueckenhoff told a federal judge “that there was probable cause to believe Mr. Teixeira had violated two parts of Title 18 of the federal code: Section 793 and Section 1924.”
18 U.S. Code § 793 – Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information(b): “Whoever, for the purpose aforesaid, and with like intent or reason to believe, copies, takes, makes, or obtains, or attempts to copy, take, make, or obtain, any sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, document, writing, or note of anything connected with the national defense;”
18 U.S. Code § 793 – Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information(d): “Whoever, lawfully having possession of, access to, control over, or being entrusted with any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it on demand to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it;”
18 U.S. Code § 1924 – “Unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material: Whoever, being an officer, employee, contractor, or consultant of the United States, and, by virtue of his office, employment, position, or contract, becomes possessed of documents or materials containing classified information of the United States, knowingly removes such documents or materials without authority and with the intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than five years, or both.”
The leak happened on the online group Thug Shaker Central. Those in the group said Teixeira wanted to show his friends “about actual war.” The documents included “detailed battlefield maps from Ukraine and confidential assessments of Russia’s war machine.”
The complaint states that Teixeira started posting the classified information “in or about December 2022.” The user interrogated by the FBI said the leaker posted the documents “to discuss geopolitical affairs and historical wars.”
Teixeira told the people on the platform that he was “concerned that he may be discovered making the transcriptions of text in the workplace, so he began taking the documents to his residence and photographing them.”
Other information in the documents:
The FBI agent said Teixeira had a Top Secret security clearance since 2021. He explained that Teixeira needed to sign “a lifetime binding non-disclosure agreement in which he would have had to acknowledge that the unauthorized disclosure of protected information could result in criminal charges.”
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