Discord leak suspect shared U.S. secrets and techniques with foreigners: Justice Dept.

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The Air Nationwide Guard member accused in a high-profile categorised leaks case seems to have shared delicate secrets and techniques with international nationals and had raised concern amongst his co-workers within the months earlier than he was charged with mishandling and disseminating nationwide safety info, prosecutors mentioned in a court docket submitting Wednesday.

Jack Teixeira, 21, was arrested in April after FBI brokers traced again to him a set of categorised materials posted in a web-based chat group. Authorities say Teixeira, who labored as an IT skilled at a military base in Massachusetts’s Cape Cod, misused his high secret clearance to share U.S. intelligence assessments and different delicate info with others on Discord, a social media platform common with online game gamers.

He’s scheduled to seem in court docket Friday the place U.S. Justice of the Peace decide David Hennessy plans to rule on whether or not Teixeira ought to stay behind bars whereas awaiting trial. Of their Wednesday court docket submitting, prosecutors supplied new proof, “which compounds the nationwide safety and public security dangers that the federal government beforehand famous to the Court docket,” and reveals, they mentioned, that he shouldn’t be launched.

One of many teams the place he shared info had upward of 150 customers, officers mentioned, and among the many members “are numerous people who represented that they resided in different international locations” and whose accounts hint again to international web addresses.

Teixeira’s “willful transmission of categorised info over an prolonged interval to greater than 150 customers worldwide” undermines his lawyer’s claims that he by no means meant for the data to be shared extensively, prosecutors wrote.

Teixeira’s lawyer filed court docket papers arguing that prosecutors have wrongly in contrast his conduct to high-profile leak circumstances from the previous, when the case is extra just like lesser-known leak investigations through which defendants have been launched on bond.

Alleged leaker fixated on guns and envisioned ‘race war’

The brand new submitting additionally recounts on-line chats through which Teixeira seems to each brag about how a lot categorised info he is aware of and has shared, and perceive the potential authorized penalties of such actions.

“Realizing what occurs greater than just about anybody is cool,” the airman allegedly wrote in a chat dated mid-November. When one other person prompt he write a weblog concerning the info, Teixeira replied, “making a weblog could be the equal of what chelsea manning did,” referring to a major classified leak case in 2010.

The submitting additionally reveals that Teixeira was written up by colleagues for apparently not following guidelines for using categorised methods. A Sept. 15 Air Pressure memorandum included within the newly launched court docket supplies notes that Teixiera “had been noticed taking notes on categorised intelligence info” inside a room particularly designed to deal with delicate categorised materials.

Teixeira, the Air Pressure memo says, was instructed “to not take notes in any type on categorised intelligence info.” A few month later, a memo famous that Teixeira “was probably ignoring the cease-and-desist order” given to him in September. He was instructed to cease “any deep dives into categorised intelligence info and concentrate on his job,” that memo mentioned.

Then in January, a member of his unit noticed Teixeira “viewing content material that was not associated to his main obligation and was associated to the intelligence subject.” That memo additionally famous that Teixeira “had been beforehand notified to concentrate on his personal profession duties and to not hunt down intelligence merchandise.”

A member of the Massachusetts Air Nationwide Guard, Teixeira has been charged with two counts: retention and transmission of nationwide protection info and willful retention of categorised paperwork. He faces as much as 25 years in jail. Because the investigation proceeds, he may face further fees.

Prosecutors and protection attorneys had sparred over whether or not Teixeira ought to be launched on bond. Federal prosecutors mentioned he posed a safety danger as a result of he may nonetheless possess categorised paperwork that investigators haven’t but discovered, and international governments may attempt to recruit him to search out out what he is aware of.

Teixeira’s lawyer, Brendan Kelley, has mentioned that with cautious monitoring Teixeira may safely go house — arguing authorities have tried to make a younger man who nonetheless lives along with his mother and father locally the place he grew up sound extra harmful than he’s.

Discord member details how documents leaked from closed chat group

Hennessy, the decide, had pushed again on options from Teixeira’s lawyer, who claimed his consumer solely meant to share the data with a small group of online friends, not the broader world.

“The defendant put top-secret info on the web, and your argument is that he had no concept that it might go wherever past the server,” Hennessy mentioned at a listening to final month. “I discover it slightly unbelievable that the defendant couldn’t foresee that chance.”

Teixeira’s father advised the court docket final month that, if his son have been launched, he would notify authorities ought to any bond situations be violated, and that there could be safety cameras across the house to alert the daddy to any motion there whereas he was at work.

“The injury the Defendant has already triggered to the U.S. nationwide safety is immense. The injury the Defendant continues to be able to inflicting is extraordinary,” prosecutors wrote in an earlier court docket submitting. “Detention is important to make sure that the Defendant doesn’t proceed on his harmful and damaging path.”

Of their filings, prosecutors have mentioned Teixeira exhibited disturbing habits 5 years in the past whereas a highschool scholar, and was suspended after a classmate overheard him speaking about weapons, “together with Molotov cocktails, weapons on the college, and racial threats.”

Extra just lately, in response to prosecutors, Teixeira posted feedback on-line about conducting a mass capturing, together with in November when he wrote in a social media publish that if he had his means, he would “kill a … [expletive] ton of individuals,” which he mentioned could be “culling the weak minded.” In earlier court docket filings, prosecutors additionally shared pictures of what they characterised as an “arsenal” of weapons present in his house.

Teixeira’s lawyer has mentioned the speak of an arsenal was overheated — as a result of the weapons in court docket pictures that had been regarded as in his room usually are not actual weapons weapons, however replicas referred to as airsoft weapons. The firearms in Teixeira’s home are locked away in a cupboard, in response to Kelley.

Prosecutors say there is also proof that, because the leak investigation progressed, Teixeira could have destroyed proof of his crimes and advised others to not speak to authorities. Earlier this month, Teixeira allegedly advised a web-based buddy: “If anybody comes wanting, don’t inform them” something, and inspired that individual to “delete all messages.”

Teixeira’s attorneys have pushed again in opposition to these claims, saying Teixeira was peacefully studying a Bible when brokers got here to arrest him, and that prosecutors’ notions of the dangers to nationwide safety if he’s launched are far-fetched and fanciful.

The prosecution, Teixeira’s lawyer Allen Franco wrote in a court docket submitting final month, has engaged in “hyperbolic judgments and offers little greater than hypothesis {that a} international adversary will seduce Mr. Teixeira and orchestrate his clandestine escape from the US. This argument is illusory. The federal government has offered no articulable details to assist these assertions.”

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