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Federal prosecutors argued at a hearing yesterday that Massachusetts Air National Guard guy Jack Teixeira needs to stay in jail before his trial for allegedly leaking classified Pentagon documents. The 21-year-old walking security risk should be detained until trial because he gave up a ton of military secrets for the sake of impressing his gamer dork friends on Discord, the prosecutors said. Teixeira also regularly talked about his desire to equip a minivan or SUV as an “assassination van” and to “kill a [expletive] ton of people,” for the lulz we guess. The DOJ detention memo did not specify whether that was a shit ton of people or a fuck ton of people, nor whether, if it were the latter, he meant a metric or standard fuck ton.
Magistrate Judge David Hennessy didn’t make an immediate decision yesterday on whether Teixeira will be kept in jail before trial, or to grant his attorneys’ request that he be allowed to stay under supervision at his father’s home, because he’s a good boy who would definitely stay off the internet and there’s no chance he’d flee.
The feds’ court filing detailed Teixeira’s murderous fantasies, as well as the trove of weapons he’d collected, and argued that he’s too much of a flight risk to let out of jail, particularly since he might still have classified information that hasn’t yet made it to public view. That information, the government argued, could be of “tremendous value to hostile nation states that could offer him safe harbor and attempt to facilitate his escape from the United States.”
We can see that the government wouldn’t want to risk that, even if it would settle online arguments about whether Thor could beat the Russian military in Ukraine alone, or if he’d need help from Doctor Strange or Captain America. (Iron Man or Captain Marvel would be too over-powered to make the argument worth even having.)
The feds show that Teixeira has a long history of talking about killing and shit, going back to an incident in high school (in March 2018, which was like last Tuesday for most of us) that led to his suspension after
a classmate overheard him make remarks about weapons, including Molotov cocktails, guns at the school, and racial threats. In the pretrial services interview, the Defendant attributed those remarks to a reference to a video game.
Call us skeptical, since we’re pretty sure that “guns at the school and racial threats” aren’t part of any video games, unless maybe Teixeira had downloaded the special School Shooter Expansion Pack. That incident also kept Teixeira from being approved for a firearms ID card, since 1) local police knew about it and 2) Massachusetts actually has sane firearms laws.
But the boy really wanted guns, and was eventually able to buy a small arsenal after getting his application approved, in part because he “cited his position of trust in the United States government as a reason he could be trusted to possess a firearm.” Who says government lawyers don’t have a sense of irony?
When Teixeira was arrested, FBI agents found a gun locker in his bedroom containing “multiple weapons, including handguns, bolt-action rifles, shotguns, an AK-style high-capacity weapon, and a gas mask.” Elsewhere in his room, agents found ammunition, “tactical pouches,” and what seems to be a silencer, which would be illegal unless he had a license.
And then there’s the jolly social media posts where he talked up all the murder he wanted to do:
The Defendant’s statements included the following:
• In November 2022, the Defendant stated that if he had his way, he would “kill a [expletive] ton of people” because it would be “culling the weak minded.”
• In February 2023, the Defendant told a user that he was tempted to make a specific type of minivan into an “assassination van.”
• Also in February 2023, the Defendant sought advice from another user about what type of rifle would be easy to operate from the back of an SUV. He describes how he would conduct the shooting in a “crowded urban or suburban environment.”
• In March 2023, the Defendant described SUVs and crossovers as “mobile gun trucks” and “[o]ff-road and good assassination vehicles.”
OK but who among us hasn’t occasionally told all our online buds that we need to cull the weak by going full DC sniper? Oh, all of us?
The filing also noted that Teixeira had taken some very half-assed steps to try to cover his tracks, since tampering with witnesses and destroying evidence are among the criteria that can be used to order detention until trial. He deleted the Discord server where he had shared the classified documents, told friends to “delete all messages” and “If anyone comes looking, don’t tell them shit,” and gotten a new phone number and email address.
Teixeira also smashed up a tablet, a laptop, and his Xbox — although he may not be a super spy, since the FBI found the devices in a dumpster at his parents’ house, where he lived.
At yesterday’s hearing, the AP reports, Judge Hennessey
expressed skepticism of defense arguments that the government hasn’t alleged Teixeira intended leaked information to be widely disseminated.
“Somebody under the age of 30 has no idea that when they put something on the internet that it could end up anywhere in this world?” the judge asked. “Seriously?”
We can only assume that Teixeira’s defense in the case will be that he’s simply too fucking stupid to have been a threat to national security.
[AP / Pretrial Detention Memo / Vox]
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