Military secrets leak case: Jack Teixeira hearing rescheduled
A scheduled hearing in the federal criminal case of alleged military secrets leaker Jack Teixeira has been canceled for the second week in a row.
Federal prosecutors say that Teixeira, either 21 or 22, abused his security clearance as a Massachusetts Air National Guardsman to share more than 40 images of classified documents largely regarding the war in Ukraine to the roughly 50 members of a Discord server he led. A “server” is what the gaming-dominated social media platform Discord calls individual groups or forums.
His case was scheduled for a hearing on Dec. 11, which was canceled as a joint report from prosecutors and defense attorneys was entered in its stead. Another hearing scheduled for this week has been continued to Feb. 9.
“Since the last pretrial conference, the government has made an additional production of classified discovery and is preparing to produce additional classified discovery this week,” prosecutors in the case wrote in a motion for the continuance, which was agreed-upon by defense attorneys. “At that point, the parties anticipate that discovery will be substantially complete such that it would be appropriate to use the February 9, 2023, date as a Pretrial Conference.”
The fallout goes beyond the criminal proceedings against Teixeira. Earlier this month, authorities announced that, beginning in September, an additional 15 members of the Massachusetts Air National Guard have been either disciplined or lost their jobs following Teixeira’s alleged leaks of sensitive materials, the Herald has reported.
A report from the Air Force Inspector General said that while Teixeira, who was an information technology specialist at the 102nd Intelligence Wing at Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod, was the primary cause of the top-secret document leak, there were “also a number of contributing factors, both direct and indirect, that enabled the unauthorized disclosures to occur and continue over an extended period of time.”