June 21, 2023, 10:35 PM
June 21, 2023, 10:35 PM
Jack Teixeira, the young American soldier accused of leak top secret Pentagon documents in an online chat forum, he pleaded not guilty on Wednesday (06.21.2022) to charges that could send him to prison for decades.
He Air National Guard computer specialist21, was arrested in April for allegedly orchestrating the most serious leak of classified US documents in a decade.
Is facing six counts of withholding and transmitting national defense information. Each of them carries penalties of up to 10 years in prison.
Teixeira appeared before Judge David Hennessy in Worcester, Massachusetts, on Wednesday and pleaded not guilty to each charge, according to court documents.
His lawyer asked that Teixeira be released pending trial, but the judge denied the request.
Teixeira has been held at the Plymouth County Federal Prison south of Boston awaiting trial, the date of which has not yet been set.
Teixeira is suspected of posting the documents, some dated to early March, on a Discord forum.
The documents, quickly disseminated on the internet, indicated the US concern over Ukraine’s military capability against invading Russian forces and showed that Washington had apparently spied on its allies Israel and South Korea, among other sensitive matters.
It was the biggest such leak since 2013 – when Edward Snowden leaked National Security Agency documents – and raised stark questions about Teixeira’s, who ranks as a private second class, access to high-level secrets.
