AFP reported on June 16 that a 21-year-old member of the US Air Force National Guard has been charged in connection with the shocking leak of top-secret Pentagon documents. IT specialist Jack Teixeira is accused of orchestrating the leak, the most damaging in a decade.
A federal grand jury in Boston indicted Teixeira on six additional charges related to "willfully possessing and transmitting classified information related to national defense." Each charge carries a potential sentence of up to 10 years in prison.
Defendant Jack Teixeira
Teixeira was arrested by the FBI at his home in Massachusetts on April 13 and charged with violating the Espionage Act. He has also been indicted by the Department of Justice for illegally accessing and disseminating classified national defense information.
After being leaked on Discord, some of the files subsequently appeared on other social media platforms such as Twitter, 4Chan, and Telegram.
The documents subsequently circulated online, revealing US concerns about Ukraine's military capabilities and suspicions that the US was secretly monitoring allies such as Israel and South Korea, among other sensitive information.
This was the biggest leak since Edward Snowden's revelations of the US National Security Agency documents in 2013, and raised questions about how a low-level employee like Teixeira could have access to such highly classified documents.
Teixeira is the third-lowest-ranking officer in the U.S. Air Force and has had access to top-secret security documents since 2021.
Last month, a judge ruled that Teixeira would remain in custody pending trial, after prosecutors determined he continued to pose a threat to U.S. national security.
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