National Guardsman Jack Teixeira Faces Two Counts Under Espionage Act for Allegedly Leaking Classified Documents
The documents included information about Ukraine and how America supposedly spied on South Korea.
Massachusetts Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira, 21, faces two counts under the Espionage Act for allegedly leaking classified documents over a game chat server.
Teixeira did not enter a plea. The judge order he remain detained “pending a detention hearing set for Wednesday, April 19.”
FBI Agent Patrick Lueckenhoff told a federal judge “that there was probable cause to believe Mr. Teixeira had violated two parts of Title 18 of the federal code: Section 793 and Section 1924.”
18 U.S. Code § 793 – Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information(b): “Whoever, for the purpose aforesaid, and with like intent or reason to believe, copies, takes, makes, or obtains, or attempts to copy, take, make, or obtain, any sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, document, writing, or note of anything connected with the national defense;”
18 U.S. Code § 793 – Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information(d): “Whoever, lawfully having possession of, access to, control over, or being entrusted with any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it on demand to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it;”
18 U.S. Code § 1924 – “Unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material: Whoever, being an officer, employee, contractor, or consultant of the United States, and, by virtue of his office, employment, position, or contract, becomes possessed of documents or materials containing classified information of the United States, knowingly removes such documents or materials without authority and with the intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than five years, or both.”
The leak happened on the online group Thug Shaker Central. Those in the group said Teixeira wanted to show his friends “about actual war.” The documents included “detailed battlefield maps from Ukraine and confidential assessments of Russia’s war machine.”
The complaint states that Teixeira started posting the classified information “in or about December 2022.” The user interrogated by the FBI said the leaker posted the documents “to discuss geopolitical affairs and historical wars.”
Teixeira told the people on the platform that he was “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.”
Other information in the documents:
- Five Western nations had 100 special forces in Ukraine in February.
- America probably spied on South Korea.
- Iran and Nicaragua have spoken about “bolstering their military cooperation” to stop American influence in Latin America.
The FBI agent said Teixeira had a Top Secret security clearance since 2021. He explained that Teixeira needed to sign “a lifetime binding non-disclosure agreement in which he would have had to acknowledge that the unauthorized disclosure of protected information could result in criminal charges.”
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Comments
The mystery to me is, how did anybody as stupid as this get assigned to their “Intelligence Wing”???
Apparently they do stuff like this all the time. Background checks will only reveal so much.
He’s 21. He’s got no background to speak of. Apparently background checks don’t check to see whether a person is a fool.
He’s not stupid. He lacks wisdom. People like don’t seem to understand that there is a huge differene between intelligence and wisdom.
For example, I had an Uncle with a PhD in Nuclear Physics and a second PhD in Nuclear Engineering. He was a professor at Berkeley and designed atomic bombs for the US Military at Lawrence Livermore Labs.
He was also the kind of guy who’d stick a fork in a live toaster because the bread was stuck.
He lacks common sense.
And at the same time, he’s smarter than all the people who classified those documents.
He did his patriotic duty. He should he celebrated as a hero.
But if Trump were still president you would be howling for his blood.
What George Carlin said about “military intelligence” was true.
“The term Jumbo Shrimp has always amazed me. What is a Jumbo Shrimp? I mean, it’s like Military Intelligence – the words don’t go together, man.”
You didn’t think the government was actually competent did you?
They are going to destroy this 21 y/o white hispanic
If he’s smart he’ll identify as trans quickly
I’m glad he did it, they lie to us all the time, all the time and people are dying and more will
I’m sorry he got caught, he should have given copies to a “trusted” journalist anonymously
Yeah. Lot’s of people are “glad he did it”…right up to the point at which some other guy, with goals diametrically opposed to yours, also does it. Then, it’s “Hang the traitor!”
It’s not right just because you think it helps your side.
My side is that there should be no classified documents, so I’ll never oppose people releasing them.
And yes, it is right what he did.
“Texeira’ is about as Hispanic as chouriço.
The kid’s Portugese, like a significant portion of Dighton/Rehoboth.
You’ve left out a U. You’ve left out the main one, too.
What would have been the point of that? His entire purpose was to get bragging rights with his online buddies; how would anonymously leaking it help him do that?
Matt Taibbi cautions appropriately:
“You’ll read a lot in the coming days about the dangers of apps like Discord, or of online gaming groups, which counterintelligence officials told the Washington Post today are a “magnet for spies.” The Leaker tale will also surely be framed as reason to pass the RESTRICT Act, the wet dream of creepazoid Virginia Senator Mark Warner, which would give government wide latitude to crack down on “communication technology” creating “undue or unacceptable risk” to national security.”
“When civilians or whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, Julian Assange (in jail for an incredible four years now), Reality Winner and now the “Discord Leaker” bring leaked information to the public, the immediate threat is Espionage Act charges and decades of jail time. When a CIA head or a top FBI official does it, it’s just news. In fact, officials talk openly about using “strategic leaks” as a P.R. staple. In a world where media currency is becoming the ultimate power, these people want a monopoly. It’s infuriating.”
https://www.racket.news/p/the-crackdown-cometh
Bad as this may be, one commenter said, “The key point for me is that the media are more interested in the supposed leaker’s background than in the substance of the messages our government was sharing internally.”
More than ever, our government misleads us about what it’s doing and it’s intentions. Along with the oppression against the American people, welcome to the American police state.
Yes, saw that early this morning. I take none of this leak scenario at face value.
Agreed. The pivot away from the substance of the material contained in the leaks to a rally for giving the surveillance State agencies more power and authority is already underway.
If y’all haven’t already done so you may wish to consider contacting your Senators and Rep to oppose passage of the RESTRICT Act and similar legislation.
I look at 18 U.S. Code § 1924, and the pulse in my neck throbs, “Hillary! Hillary! Hillary!”
China doesn’t need us right now, yet they do. They need our influence to deal with Taiwan and to reunify the Korean peninsula with Communism. Once done and Russia is swooning over that warm water Japan becomes Atlantis II and sea levels fall drastically when the seawater rushes in to fill the enormous crater that was once the proud nation island after the nukes fall.
Why can’t he do what Hillary did, and be allowed to wipe his server clean and have his other electronic devices returned, unexamined?
Because he doesn’t have a server filled with blackmail info and Bidenesque “business opportunities.”
He’s not important enough for ignorance of the law to be an excuse. Also, he attended briefings and signed forms saying he understood the law. I don’t know if Hillary signed similar forms as Secretary of State – but if they aren’t on record, everyone who revealed classified information to her broke the law.
Given that breadth of these documents and the fact that some were SCIF limited, I find it hard to believe a national guardsman would have access to these documents.
I keep thinking of the dead sailor accused of causing the USS Iowa gun turret explosion. How they fashioned a story of why he did it. Is this the new fall guy for a bigger cover-up or was he feed the info after being watched on the website. Remember the “former” FBI agent on the web with the Buffalo shooter? Reagan’s “trust but verify” requires both and neither is possible from the Feds these days. Did the press really sleuth this out or are they giving cover.?
The documents were on computers, and he was responsible for maintaining the software and operating system on those computers. That requires root access. Anything else is like padlocking the hood on your car when you take it to the mechanic.
Doesn’t this crime fall under military Law?
Yes- but… It’s an ANG unit. Ofttimes someone will hold both a military and a civilian job with the same duties. Which hat was he wearing when he accessed the information?
There’s way too much we DON’T know yet about the whole thing.
The biggest being- why would ANY ANG unit in ANY state need the information that was leaked. I can’t even think of why the commanding general of any ANG unit would need the information. So someone in the upper ranks screwed up bigly. This information was in places it shouldn’t be. Other arrests should follow this one.
My guess is a background check ain’t what it was 40 years ago. And espionage is handled depending on how woke you are. Leftist enough you walk away, enemy of the government you might never see the light of day again.
This idiot is age twenty-one, yet, conducted himself with all the classic immaturity and narcissism of a high school teen. Dispensing national security secrets to impress his chat room buddies. It doesn’t get any more idiotic than that.
I’m amazed that this dope is only facing a 15-year sentence. Seems light, under the circumstances. I’d expect 20-25, at a minimum, given the scope and severity of the intelligence materials that were leaked, here, and, the potential loss of life.
Malignant narcissism kills.
Yes, he’s 21. And even being 21 isn’t what it used to be. As maturity levels go down, we hand these fools more and more responsibility. Everything is backwards.
Actually he conduced himself with the classic maturity of all heroes. This was not national security secrets – it’s information that should have be public. He did a great thing – save America lives.
And you know all this how? You’ve got him sounding like ‘Jason Bourne’. How about the lives of our counter intelligence people in dangerous places around the world who may now be exposed?
General Washington would have ordered him shot.
No Water Closet?
No garage full of classified disclosures?
No secret knowledge exchanged in a progressive woke?
No experimental equipment left on an abortion field?
Obviously, he was doing it wrong.
This guy is a 21 year-old A1C weekend warrior, I doubt he had access to “secret” anything. This is a distraction. They are hyping this to keep us from finding out something big.
The Swamp sure gets on the case when it’s in their own interests, don’t they?
Epstein.
Hillary Clinton.
Hunter Biden.
Joe Biden.
JFK.
RFK.
Martin Luther King.
*Crickets*
ARI, back in the day, leaving stuff lying around so some schmuck could snap pics was as bad as sky writing the most seekrit of seekrits over Moscow. Indeed, e-devices of any kind moving in and out was verboten, exactly because they can carry copies of controlled info.
Whoever let the docs loose should be charged, too. They can share a cell with whoever let The Discord Wrangler traipse about with a phone.
This smells seriously strange. This guy seems more like a patsy than any sort of a spy and it really smells like the administration is lying through its teeth once again because it’s incapable of speaking the truth and they can’t have the American people knowing the truth.
Two counts??? How many documents did he leak? What happened to the Jan 6 standard?
My video gaming ended with Pong, so I speak here with second-hand information. However, I have dealt on line with people who get down in the weeds about technical issues, far, far down.
As in, “The T34/85 had 82cm of rolled steel armor at 67 degrees on the glacis and could be pierced by the long 75 at ranges up to 1000 meters. Therefore, the Germans won the Second World War.”
I make up the numbers but not the sentiment.
And apparently current gamers like to get all the technical info possible to modify and finesse their gaming. And some, apparently, are wandering around sensitive areas, possibly even classified at some level.
If this is what our guy was doing, whither cometh Israeli politics, South Korean ammo orders, other ancillary and unconnected stuff?
On the other hand, if it wasn’t, why was he bothering with all that dry stuff? Can’t see an IT guy having such an interest in, say, Israeli politics as to work a work-around to find out what’s going on in Israel.
He was fed this stuff and was a willing conduit, likely not understanding the consequences.