National Guard pilot Jack Teixeira charged with illegal transmission of classified documents
Jack Teixeira, an Air National Guard soldier accused of posting a trove of classified material online, has been charged with six federal counts, the Justice Department announced Thursday.
A federal grand jury chose to indict the 21-year-old soldier with willful retention of national defense information after he allegedly shared documents marked top secret to the Discord chat platform sometime last year.
“The U.S. government entrusted Jack Teixeira with access to classified national defense information—including information that could reasonably be expected to be particularly damaging to national security if shared,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement, adding that the leak “It jeopardizes our national security.”
A member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, Teixeira received a top-secret security clearance in 2021 and allegedly illegally accessed a trove of sensitive documents, including dozens of pages related to U.S. military aid to Ukraine.
Documents leaked by the alleged suspects show that U.S. and NATO special forces are active in Ukraine, estimates of Ukrainian casualties are higher than U.S. officials have publicly acknowledged, troops in Kiev are running low on ammunition and the U.S. has been monitoring its allies for conflict. U.S. officials believe many of the documents were forged or doctored.
After Teixeira was arrested by the FBI in April, the Pentagon rushed to determine the full extent of the leak, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin noted that senior officials were not aware of the leak until weeks after it happened. He said he only learned about the document after the media began reporting its contents on April 6.
Deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singer later said the military did not know the total number of documents shared online, and that news organizations continued to report on new documents even months later.
Teixeira remains in federal custody pending court proceedings and his request for release was denied after prosecutors deemed him a flight risk. Each of his six charges carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
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