A U.S. grand jury indicted Jack Teixeira, the Air National Guardsman accused of leaking military secrets, on Thursday, the Justice Department announced.
Teixeira faces six counts of willful retention and transmission of classified information relating to national defence, with the department saying the alleged activities began in or around 2022 and continued until his arrest in April 2023, where he was charged under the Espionage Act.
Teixeira has been in jail since a magistrate judge ruled in May that he would remain in federal custody, saying it was not “implausible at all that a foreign government would make overtures to this defendant to get information.”
Acting U.S. attorney Joshua Levy said in a statement that the “unauthorized removal, retention and transmission” of classified information jeopardizes the security of the U.S. and those granted access to such classified material have a duty to safeguard the information.
“We are committed to ensuring that those entrusted with sensitive national security information adhere to the law,” he said.
The 21-year-old is the primary suspect in the disclosure of sensitive documents related to the Ukraine war and numerous other topics in a leak that has stirred major questions about access to and protection of national security secrets.
Documents leaked caused concerns that Russia could use them to reassess its own strategies in the Ukraine war, and caused criticism for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after a report by the Washington Post said Trudeau privately told NATO officials that Canada would never meet the military alliance’s spending target of two per cent of GDP.
Former president Barack Obama’s ambassador said if the comments proved true, it could be a setback for future U.S.-Canada relations.
Prosecutors say Teixeira leaked classified documents to a group of gamers on the messaging app Discord.
President Joe Biden has since ordered an investigation into why the alleged leaker had access to sensitive information. And in the days since his arrest, the Department of Justice said in a court filing, in an effort to keep him behind bars, that superiors of the 21-year-old had raised concerns internally on multiple occasions about his handling or viewing of classified information.
“Teixeira is charged with sharing information with users on a social media platform he knew were not entitled to receive it,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “In doing so, he is alleged to have violated U.S. law and endangered national security.”
According to charging documents, Teixeira allegedly transmitted documents in two ways.
The first is that he allegedly accessed classified documents “from a workstation at the Otis USANG Base and transcribed and transmitted the information in written paragraphs” to other social media users on the platform.
The second was he also “allegedly posted images of classified documents to the social media platform, which bore standard classification markings – including ‘SECRET,’ ‘TOP SECRET,’ and SCI designations.”
A court date has yet to be set for Teixeira’s trial.
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