Judge holds off on pretrial custody ruling for Pentagon leak suspect Jack Teixeira

Jack Teixeira, the National Guard airman accused of leaking U.S. intelligence documents online, on Thursday asked a magistrate judge to release him from pretrial detention, though the judge has not yet made a decision on the request. 

Magistrate Judge David Hennessy said he would consider arguments and later issue a ruling on whether the 21-year-old will stay in jail while he awaits trial for allegedly posting classified documents to a group on Discord. 

Teixeira entered the courtroom in handcuffs, an orange jumpsuit and rosary beads, with one woman in an area reserved for his friends and family audibly sobbing as he walked in, according to reporters in attendance.  

Justice Department lawyers said freeing Teixeira could threaten national security as he may still possess further secretive information that could be of value to adversary nations. They also argue that he is a serious flight risk and has a troubling history of making racist and violent remarks, doubling down on comments made in a memo filed late Wednesday.  

“What is past may not only be prologue, but in this case, it is a very good indication that the defendant will either try to flee this jurisdiction or continue in the steps that he has already taken to obstruct this investigation,” prosecutor Nadine Pellegrini argued during the hearing, according to CNN. 

Pellegrini also said that Teixeira shouldn’t be trusted to follow court rules, pointing to agreements he signed when joining the military pledging to properly handle classified documents. He broke that pledge “time and time again,” she argued.  

Teixeira’s attorneys, meanwhile, have denied he poses a flight risk, said he doesn’t have access to classified documents any longer, and accused prosecutors of exaggerating national security claims. 

“There is no allegation in the affidavit that Mr. Teixeira had any intent for these documents to become widely available on the internet or desired to disrupt the geopolitical affairs of the United States,” Teixeira’s lawyers wrote in a filing Thursday morning arguing for his release.  

But Hennessy challenged the defense’s argument that Teixeira didn’t expect the sensitive intelligence to be further spread online after he posted it to a private Discord group.  

“Someone under the age of 30 has no idea that if they put something on the internet that it could end up anywhere in this world?” Hennessy asked lawyer Teixeira’s lawyer Brendan Kelley. “Seriously? … I find it a little incredible that the defendant could not foresee that possibility.” 

In their filing, defense lawyers also claimed that “nothing in the government’s exhaustive searches of his parents’ houses, his vehicle, nor its interviews to date, support its speculation that an undiscovered trove of documents exists.” 

But Hennessy also pushed back on that argument, suggesting Teixeira could remember details from the classified materials he read and later copied. 

“I’m not so sure that the government’s concern is entirely imaginative. Information about the Russia-Ukraine war is extremely relevant and perhaps valuable,” Hennessy said. “It sounds like a legitimate concern.” 

In their argument, the defense suggested that Teixeira be released into the custody of his father, and he could be barred from the internet and under location monitoring. 

Teixeira’s father, also named Jack Teixeira, told Hennessy he would report his son to the court if he were to break his conditions of release. 

“My son is well aware of the fact that if he is released and does anything against probation, I will report it to his probation officer or anyone else,” he said. 

Teixeira, who has not yet entered a formal plea, has been charged under the Espionage Act with unauthorized detention and transmission of national defense information and unauthorized removal of classified information and defense materials. 

The document leaks have shaken the U.S. defense and intelligence community, with classified information on the war in Ukraine as well as on American allies and adversaries spread across the internet. The leak is one of the most high-profile such incidents in recent U.S. history. 

Updated at 6:09 p.m.