Judge delays detention hearing for alleged Pentagon leaker Jack Teixeira

A federal judge on Wednesday delayed a pretrial detention hearing for Jack Teixeira, the 21-year-old airman in the Massachusetts Air National Guard accused of posting dozens of secret Pentagon documents to social media. 

Teixeira has been charged with unlawful retention and transmission of national defense information and unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents. If convicted on both charges, he faces up to 15 years in prison.

Magistrate Judge David Hennessy on Wednesday granted a request by Teixeira’s public defenders to delay the scheduled hearing for two weeks to give them time to review the government’s request for detention. The Justice Department agreed to the delay. 

Teixeira has waived his right to a preliminary hearing.  

Teixeira was arrested on April 13, a week after the documents, posted to the social messaging platform Discord starting in February 2023, had become public knowledge. 

It’s not known how many documents were posted. CBS News has reviewed more than 50 that appear to be part of the leak. The documents reviewed cover the Russia-Ukraine conflict, China, Turkey, South Korea and Israel. 

According to charging documents, one of the posted documents “described the status of the Russia Ukraine conflict, including troop movements, on a particular date.” The government confirmed that the document in question is classified at the highest level, according to the criminal complaint. 

Teixeira has held a TS/SCI  — Top Secret clearance, with access to Sensitive Compartmented Information — since 2021, court papers said. 

Teixeira was part of the 102nd Intelligence Wing and stationed at Cape Cod, Massachusetts. A Pentagon official told CBS News on Tuesday that work at the 102nd Intelligence Wing has been paused since Teixeira’s arrest. 

The White House has been trying to assess the damage from the leaks. National Security Council spokesman Jack Kirby said Tuesday that President Biden has tasked the director of national intelligence to conduct a “systematic intelligence community-wide damage assessment, so that we may better understand the full scope of what we’re dealing with.” 

Kirby said Mr. Biden has also directed senior leaders across the administration to reach out to U.S. allies to “reassure them about our commitment to safeguarding intelligence, to answer to the best of our ability, any questions that they might have and to express our continued commitment to all our security partnerships.”  

Catherine Herridge, David Martin and Eleanor Watson contributed to this report.