As 21-year-old National Guard Airman Jack Teixeira was charged in federal court with two felonies involving illegally taking and leaking classified information and military secrets that could get him 15 years in prison, he told his father “I love you” when he was led off in cuffs by US Marshals.
(Video Credit: LiveNOW from FOX)
The Department of Defense claims the leaked documents contain “sensitive and highly-classified material.” Teixeira was officially charged on Friday with unauthorized retention and transmission of national defense information and willful retention of classified documents.
Wearing handcuffs and a Khaki prison jumpsuit, the young guardsman was read the charges just after 10 am while appearing in a federal court in Boston, Massachusetts. Teixeira did not enter a plea. The judge ordered him to be detained pending a detention hearing that was set for Wednesday, April 19, according to the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts.
The hearing occurred less than a day after the guardsman was taken into custody at his home where he lived with his mother by the FBI and the military in North Dighton, Massachusetts.
During the hearing, his father, Jack Teixeira Senior, yelled at his son, “I love you, Jack!” The guardsman turned as he was being led off by US Marshals and told his father, “I love you, Dad.”
(Video Credit: Daily Mail)
Harrowing final phone call of Pentagon leaker releasedhttps://t.co/zZZBWDTaaO
— American Wire News (@americanwire_) April 14, 2023
Fox News obtained a criminal complaint on Friday that shows the FBI interviewed a member of the Discord social media platform on Monday. The 17-year-old boy told a special agent that an unnamed individual, who would later be identified as Teixeira, was posting “what appeared to be classified information” starting in December 2022. The postings were reportedly part of a discussion on “geopolitical affairs and current and historical wars.”
The unnamed member of Teixeira’s group, “Thug Shaker Central,” said that he began sharing paragraphs at that time. In January of this year, he allegedly began posting images of documents that appeared to have classification markings on them.
One of the documents Teixeira is said to have posted “described the status of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, including troop movements, on a particular date,” according to prosecutors. That information is purportedly “based on sensitive U.S. intelligence, gathered through classified sources and methods, and contains national defense information.”
The guardsman reportedly “explained that he had become concerned that he may be discovered making the transcriptions of text in the workplace, so he began taking the documents to his residence and photographing them.”
(Video Credit: Daily Mail)
On April 6, the complaint contends that the cybersecurity systems journeyman “used his government computer to search classified intelligence reporting for the word ‘leak.’” Teixeira held the highest-level security clearance granted by the federal government for top-secret information, according to an internal Department of Defense email reviewed by Fox News.
The FBI had been watching the guardsman for some time but had to make a move on him after The New York Times identified him on Thursday morning, a source briefed on the investigation told Fox News.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald tweeted, “I can barely put into words how dangerous and twisted it is that it is now the NYT and WashPost that does the FBI’s job for it by hunting down leakers of classified information — the people on whom real journalism depends — working in tandem with state-funded Bellingcat.”
I can barely put into words how dangerous and twisted it is that it is now the NYT and WashPost that does the FBI's job for it by hunting down leakers of classified information — the people on whom real journalism depends — working in tandem with state-funded Bellingcat: https://t.co/v2VIq2lSYI
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) April 14, 2023
Greenwald blasted the complicit media over the story.
Here are Washington Post and New York Times reporters celebrating themselves and all the cool things they did when doing the FBI's job of tracking down leakers and exposing their identity to ensure they are arrested:https://t.co/GwnPKALp3q
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) April 14, 2023
And he points out that if this had happened under former President Trump, things would have been very different.
If this leaker had published these documents under Trump, to show the Trump WH was lying about the US role in a major war, there’s be a bust of him already unveiled outside NBC News’s studios, a star turn on Colbert, and a ceremony where Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer hug him.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) April 14, 2023
“The Department of Defense is leading an important effort now to evaluate and review the national security implications and most important, to conduct a review of the methods of access, accountability, and control procedures that the Department has so that something like this can never happen again,” Attorney General Merrick Garland stated on Friday.
It is unknown if Teixeira will also face military charges.
“This is not just about taking home documents,” Garland asserted. “That is, of course, itself illegal. But this is about the transmission, both the unlawful retention and the transmission of the documents. Everyone knows here that the documents, in the end, were transmitted. That violates 18 U.S.C. 793, and 18 U.S.C. 1924. There’s very serious penalties associated with that.”
“People who sign agreements to be able to receive classified documents acknowledge the importance to the national security of not disclosing those documents,” he added. “And we intend to send that message, how important it is to our national security.”
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