A military hearing officer was requested by U.S. Air Force prosecutors on Tuesday to suggest a court-martial prosecution for Jack Teixeira, a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard who is charged with disclosing a vast amount of top-secret military information.
 
After entering a guilty plea to distinct counts by the US Department of Justice in March, Teixeira, 22, was charged with military crimes. He first appeared in court while wearing a uniform at Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts.
 
Air Force prosecutors said he ought to be tried by court-martial for allegedly interfering with the legal process and disobeying an order while he was an airman first class at the Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
 
In order to bolster its allegations, the prosecution did not summon any witnesses, and Teixeira's defence team said that the scant documentation that was used in the hearing was not enough to establish Teixeira's guilt. In his defence, Major Luke Gilhooly said that Teixeira's guilty plea contained self-incriminating remarks made by him, and that the Air Force was attempting, "to get their own pound of flesh," by improperly using this information.
 
As a journeyman in cyber defence operations, or information technology support, Teixeira was charged with committing one of the worst breaches of U.S. national security in recent memory. Teixeira was taken into custody in April of 2023. According to authorities, Teixeira was a low-level airman but had a top-secret security clearance. He started reading hundreds of confidential papers about subjects such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine in January 2022.
 
Teixeira posted classified material on the messaging app Discord on private servers, which are akin to chat rooms, under the alias "TheExcaliburEffect." He boasted that he had access to "stuff for Israel, Palestine, Syria, Iran and China." 
 
In his guilty plea, he acknowledged willfully holding onto and sending sensitive national defence information. On September 27, federal prosecutors want to seek a sentence of more than 16 years in jail, meaning he might spend at least 11 years behind bars.
 
With a combined potential term of 10-1/2 years in jail, the Air Force said on May 1 that it had chosen to press independent military charges against him. Prosecutor Captain Stephanie Evans stated at the court on Tuesday that Teixeira disregarded orders from his superiors to stop his "deep dives" into sensitive material that was unrelated to his work, and her guilty plea backed this conclusion.
 
Hundreds of documents, she said, that he accessed and printed. He threw away an iPad, an iPhone, and a PC hard drive once the breaches were discovered, Evans claimed, and he told anybody he had digital communication with to erase it.
 
Lieutenant Colonel Michael Raming, the preliminary hearing officer, appeared remotely, and Evans informed him, "This was done with a malicious intent to cover his tracks."
 
Teixeira's fundamental right to be exonerated of a double prosecution for the same offence was violated, Gilhooly contended.
Whether there is sufficient evidence to prove Teixeira's guilt or innocence and whether to suggest that he be tried by a general court-martial will be determined by Raming. A senior general will thereafter consider that recommendation.
 
 
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