The member of the U.S. Air National Guard (USANG) that is accused of leaking classified Pentagon documents to a social media platform has been indicted by the Justice Department, according to a DOJ release Thursday.
Jack Douglas Teixeira, 21, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Boston, Massachusetts, on six counts of willful retention and transmission of classified national defensive information, read the release. Teixeria, who enlisted in the USANG in September 2019 and was given top-secret security clearance in 2021, was arrested on April 13 and remains in federal custody.
"Individuals granted security clearances are entrusted to protect classified information and safeguard our nation's secrets," said FBI Director Christopher Wray, who was quoted in the release. "The allegations in today's indictment reveal a serious violation of that trust."
An investigation was originally launched in early April after highly classified documents started circulating on social media that contained details about U.S. intelligence updates, including information about military support to Ukraine. Teixeira, who had a top-secret security clearance as part of his cyber defense operations journeyman position at the Massachusetts Air National Guard, was later identified and accused of uploading hundreds of pages of sensitive information to an online Discord chatroom.
If convicted, the airman could face up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each count of willful retention and transmission of classified information.
"As laid out in the indictment, 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," said Attorney General Merrick Garland, per the release.
Newsweek reached out to the FBI National Press Office via email for additional comment.
According to the DOJ's release Thursday, Teixeria first allegedly began sharing information to the Discord group chat in January 2022. Sensitive information was uploaded online by either the airman typing out a transcription of classified documents or sharing photos to the platform. As the Justice Department noted, the images shared to the group chat included classification marks such as "SECRET" and "TOP SECRET," "indicating that they contained highly classified United States government information."
A previous affidavit from the FBI that described an interaction with a Discord user who saw Teixeira's post about the classified documents and had conversations with him regarding the information said that the airman changed how he uploaded information to Discord out of "concern" of being detected.
After circulating on Discord, the documents began transmitting on other platforms as well, such as 4Chan, Telegram and Twitter.
Update 06/15/23 6:56 p.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.
