Former Air National Guardsman and accused Pentagon top secret document leaker Jack Teixeira has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Massachusetts on six felony counts, each carrying a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.
Teixeira stands accused of committing one of the most serious U.S. security breaches since the infamous WikiLeaks fiasco in 2010, in which over 700,000 documents, videos, and diplomatic cables were leaked to the public.
“Teixeira is charged with sharing information with users on a social media platform he knew were not entitled to receive it. In doing so, he is alleged to have violated U.S. law and endangered our national security,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement.
The leaked documents contained top-secret details about both allies and foes, covering topics from Ukraine’s air defenses amidst the Russian invasion to Israel’s Mossad spy agency.
“Jack Teixeira was entrusted by the United States government with access to classified national defense information—including information that reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to national security if shared,” Garland said.
Teixeira was arrested in April after allegedly posting the highly classified materials on the messaging app Discord, sparking concerns about how a low-level airman could have access to Pentagon secrets.
President Joe Biden has ordered an investigation into why he was privy to such sensitive information, while two commanders in Teixeira’s unit were later suspended pending a probe.
Each of the six charges of unauthorized retention and transmission of national defense information carries a possible sentence of up to 10 years behind bars, up to three years of supervised release, and a fine of up to $250,000.
Teixeira’s attorney wasn’t immediately available for comment.
‘Top Secret’
Charging documents state that Teixeira joined the U.S. Air National Guard in September 2019.
Since 2021, he has held a top-secret security clearance, and it’s believed that at some point in early 2022, he started mishandling sensitive information.
He is accused of inappropriately retaining and sharing national defense information that was classified as either top secret or secret.
Teixeira allegedly shared this information on social media while aware that its disclosure could potentially harm the United States or benefit a foreign adversary.
“Individuals granted security clearances are entrusted to protect classified information and safeguard our nation’s secrets. The allegations in today’s indictment reveal a serious violation of that trust,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement.
Teixeira is accused of divulging this sensitive data on the Discord platform in two ways.
First, after accessing sensitive from a classified workstation at the Otis U.S. Air National Guard Base, he wrote it down and shared it with other users on the platform.
The second way was by posting pictures of classified documents directly onto Discord.
“The unauthorized removal, retention, and transmission of classified information jeopardizes our nation’s security,” Acting U.S. Attorney Joshua Levy said in a statement.
His lawyers had pressed the judge to release him to his father, arguing that he has no criminal history.
‘Recent Strike’
The leak Teixeira is accused of carrying out led to a large number of images circulating online.Among them, one seemed to depict a recent battle map from the Donetsk area in eastern Ukraine. Another alleged intelligence photo showed the aftermath of a “recent strike” that took place in February 2023, specifically in the city of Marinka, Donetsk.
A document, supposedly leaked from the Defense Intelligence Agency, seemed to detail potential scenarios involving the Israeli government supplying weapons to Ukrainian forces. It suggested several situations, ranked from “most plausible” to “least plausible.”
Another document claimed to display the number of Russian and Ukrainian casualties as of early March 2023. This document alleged that the conflict had resulted in the deaths of between 16,000 and 17,500 Russian soldiers and up to 71,500 Ukrainian forces since the outbreak of the conflict the previous year.
However, officials from both the United States and Ukraine have said that the leaked documents related to the war in Ukraine might have been altered or manipulated.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the chief of Ukraine’s presidential office, said in a statement following news of the leak that the posts looked like a Russian disinformation operation to sow doubts about Ukraine’s predicted counter-offensive.
The Epoch Times cannot confirm the authenticity of the documents.
