Newsman: The Suspect in the leak of classified Pentagon documents Jack Teixeira, 21, is a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard was arrested in Massachusetts Thursday. He made his first appearance at the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts ,a federal court in Boston Friday. Jack Teixeira has been charged under the Espionage Act with unauthorized retention and transmission of national defense information and unauthorized removal of classified information and defense materials. The federal judge has ordered the suspect to remain in custody pending his detention hearing scheduled for next Wednesday morning, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
Teixeira is accused of leaking classified government documents and sharing them on the gaming site Discord.Some of the documents include information about the war in Ukraine and were revealed online last week. The Department of Justice launched an investigation into the matter, which Attorney General Merrick Garland has said is ongoing.
“This is not just about taking home documents, that is of course itself illegal. This is about the transmission … of the documents,” Garland said Friday. “There are very serious penalties associated with that.”
He added, “We intend to send that message, how important it is to our national security.”
On Friday, President Biden said he has directed the military and intelligence agencies to limit distribution of classified information in the wake of the leaked documents.
“I commend the rapid action taken by law enforcement to investigate and respond to the recent dissemination of classified U.S. government documents,” Biden said in a statement.
“While we are still determining the validity of those documents, I have directed our military and intelligence community to take steps to further secure and limit distribution of sensitive information, and our national security team is closely coordinating with our partners and allies,” he said.
The Pentagon is still conducting a damage assessment of the disclosure of the classified material, which could be used as evidence against Teixeira.
According to court documents filed Friday, the FBI’s investigation found that many of the documents Teixeira leaked had classified markings including noting that they were “top secret.” Some of the images of the documents appeared to depict government information that was used in Pentagon briefings.
The court documents say that earlier this week, on or around April 10, the FBI interviewed a user of Discordwhere Teixeira allegedly leaked documents. According to the user who was interviewed, Teixeira, under a username, began posting classified information on one of the servers of the platform starting around December 2022.Teixeira was apparently the administrator of the specific server, and the user interviewed by the FBI said the purpose of the server was to discuss geopolitical affairs and current and historical wars.
The user interviewed said that originally Teixeira posted the classified information as paragraphs of text, but by January, he was posting photographs of the documents which appeared to have the classified markings of official U.S. government documents. The user interviewed said this was because Teixeira had become concerned he would be caught transcribing the documents at work, so he began to take them home to photograph.
The FBI says the user they interviewed spoke to Teixeirathrough Discord at “various times” through video chats, voice calls or the chat function. The user says they learned through these online conversations that the person they were communicating with called himself “Jack,” appeared to reside in Massachusetts and claimed he was in the U.S. Air National Guard. The user described the person they were talking to as a white male with a clean-cut appearance who was between 20-30 years old.
On or about Wednesday, one day before Teixeira was arrested, Discord provided the FBI with records of the leaker’s account. The records showed that the billing name associated with the username was Jack Teixeira and the billing address was a residence in North Dighton, Mass. — the same residence Teixeira provided as his primary residence for his employment paperwork with the Air National Guard.
Teixeira has been serving as an E-3/Airman First Class in the Air National Guard, stationed at Otis Air National Guard Base in Cape Cod. As of February 2023, court documents say, his title was Cyber Defense Operations Journeyman. He had a Top Secret security clearance granted in 2021 and access to other highly classified programs.
Court documents also show that on April 6, Teixeira used his government computer to search classified intelligence reporting for the word “leak,” which the FBI says may be reason to believe that Teixeira was searching for any updates on potential intelligence about his own actions.
