Jack Teixeira, suspected of leaking confidential documents, was taken into custody Thursday afternoon.
Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guard IT specialist, has been arrested by the FBI in connection with an investigation regarding classified documents that had allegedly been leaked to a small Discord group about a week before the arrest.
According to the U.S District Court Criminal Complaint Documents, Teixeira had been releasing top secret information online for months. Teixeira gained this information with his “top secret” security clearance as well as his “sensitive compartmented access (SCI),” which he had due to his role as a “Cyber Transport Systems Journeyman”.
Prosecutors say the leaked documents included information regarding the status of Russia’s war efforts in Ukraine and other information “based on sensitive U.S intelligence containing national defense information.”
Discord is an app used to talk amongst specific communities and groups through texting, video, calling, etc. For reasons unknown, Teixeira had begun posting this information in a Discord group chat that aimed to discuss “geopolitical affairs and current and historical wars.” Through this app, an individual said Teixeira had started by posting paragraphs of text, which then turned into photographs of documents containing classified markings.
According to the individual, on April 6th Teixeira searched the word “leak” in classified intelligence reporting on his government laptop. This past Thursday, Teixeira was then arrested, and in the Criminal Complaint, which became public on Friday, Texiera’s charges consist of “unlawfully copying and possessing classified defense records,” as the affidavit states.
The U.S. is still investigating the extent of damage this leak did, considering Teixeira had first begun posting back in December of 2022.
Many are comparing this case to the Wikileaks case back in 2010, which had over 700,000 documents circulating the internet. In the Wikileaks case, the offender, Chelsea Manning, was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
Teixeira’s case is said to be one of the most severe breaches of government security since Chelsea Manning’s case. according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Massachusetts, Teixeira has not entered a plea and is pending another hearing on Wednesday.
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