Crime
BOSTON (AP) — Jack Teixeira, the Massachusetts Air Nationwide Guard member accused of leaking secret navy papers challenged a choose’s resolution that he stay behind bars, pointing Monday to the pretrial launch of former President Donald Trump and others charged in high-profile categorised paperwork instances.
A Justice of the Peace choose who dominated in Could that 21-year-old Teixeira should stay behind bars whereas the case performs out discovered that releasing him would pose a danger that he would try to flee the nation or hinder justice. Teixeira’s attorneys are actually asking a distinct choose to reverse that call.
In court docket papers, the protection attorneys argued that Teixeira has no monetary capacity or incentive to flee, and claimed the federal government “vastly overexaggerates Mr. Teixeira’s danger to nationwide safety.” Teixeira’s attorneys famous that prosecutors didn’t search to detain Trump — or his co-defendant, Walt Nauta — though the previous president and his valet “possess extraordinary means to flee the USA.”
“Former President Trump and The Trump Group personal properties in a number of overseas nations, and former President Trump has entry to a non-public airplane. But, the danger of flight posed by their data of nationwide safety info, and their irregular capacity to flee, didn’t even end in a request that both give up their passport,” Teixeira’s attorneys wrote.
Teixeira’s attorneys wrote that the “disparate method” in these instances — that are each charged below the Espionage Act — reveals that the federal government’s “argument for Mr. Teixeira’s detention on this foundation is illusory.”
Teixeira pleaded not responsible final month to 6 counts of willful retention and transmission of nationwide protection info. Every depend is punishable by as much as 10 years in jail.
Trump has additionally pleaded not responsible to dozens of felony counts accusing him of hoarding categorised paperwork at his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida and refusing authorities calls for to provide them again. Whereas Trump was not required to give up a passport — prosecutors stated he was not thought of a flight danger — the Justice of the Peace choose directed the previous president to not focus on the case with sure witnesses. Trump has denied any wrongdoing and attacked the prosecution as politically motivated.
Teixeira, of North Dighton, has been behind bars since his April arrest on costs stemming from essentially the most consequential intelligence leak in years. His attorneys have recommended that he be launched to his father and largely confined to his dwelling with location monitoring and no entry to the web.
Teixeira is accused of sharing categorised navy paperwork about Russia’s conflict in Ukraine and different delicate nationwide safety subjects on Discord, a social media platform in style with folks enjoying on-line video games.
Authorities say Teixeira, who enlisted within the Air Nationwide Guard in 2019, started round January sharing navy secrets and techniques with different Discord customers — first by typing out categorised paperwork after which sharing images of information that bore SECRET and TOP SECRET markings. Teixeira labored as a a “cyber transport programs specialist,” primarily an IT specialist chargeable for navy communications networks.
Authorities have supplied few particulars about an alleged potential motive, however accounts of these within the on-line personal chat group the place the paperwork have been disclosled have depicted Teixeira as motivated extra by bravado than ideology.
The choose’s resolution to detain Teixeira got here after Justice Division attorneys revealed in court docket filings a historical past of disturbing on-line remarks. He wrote in November that he would “kill a (expletive) ton of individuals” if he had his approach, as a result of it might be “culling the weak minded.” Prosecutors additionally argued he stated he should have materials that hasn’t been launched, which might be of “super worth to hostile nation states that would provide him secure harbor and try to facilitate his escape from the USA.”
Teixeira’s attorneys wrote that there isn’t a proof their shopper “ever carried his on-line conversations into actuality or ever endangered any particular person in his neighborhood.” In addition they stated there’s no proof to counsel that Teixeira is so precious {that a} overseas adversary could be keen to smuggle him in another country.