Jack Teixeira Wiki

Jack Teixeira Biography

Law enforcement officers raided the 21-year-old’s home in North Dighton, Massachusetts, about 20 miles east of Providence, Rhode Island, hours after the New York Times reported that investigators wanted to speak with Teixeira, who allegedly he was stationed at Fort Bragg in North. Carolina

News helicopter footage showed Teixeria, dressed in red basketball shorts and a gray T-shirt, surrendering to what appeared to be camouflage-clad FBI agents.

“Since late last week, the FBI has aggressively pursued investigative leads, and today’s arrest exemplifies our continued commitment to identify, prosecute, and hold accountable those who betray our country’s trust and put our national security at risk,” he said. the office in a statement confirming Teixeira’s apprehension.

Statement

Attorney General Merrick Garland, in a brief statement after Teixeira’s arrest, confirmed that he was arrested “without incident” on charges related to “alleged unauthorized removal, retention and transmission of classified national defense information.”

The National Guard issued a statement saying: “We are aware of the investigation into the alleged role that a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard may have played in the recent leak of highly classified documents.”

Jack Teixeira Arrested

Massachusetts Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira was arrested at his home Thursday.

Teixeira is accused of the biggest violation of national security in at least 10 years.

Investigators believe that Teixeira, who specializes in intelligence and whose promotion to Airman 1st Class was announced last July, ran the Discord chat group known as “Thug Shaker Central” where the photos of the classified documents, sources familiar with the investigation said. .

The classified pages then spread after being posted on a second Discord channel linked to YouTuber “wow_mao” on February 28 before spreading rapidly when a member of that channel posted some of them on a larger channel called “Minecraft Earth Map.” on March 4. .

Confidential information related to the war in Ukraine, including potential vulnerabilities in the air defense capabilities of that country, Israel and South Korea, was leaked, raising international concern. US officials were alerted last week when some of the Ukraine documents appeared on Russian Telegram channels.

“We have rules in place,” said Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters Thursday, shortly after Teixeira’s arrest. “Each of us signs a confidentiality agreement. This is a criminal act, a deliberate violation of those.”

The Washington Post reported that Teixeira was known to members of his Discord channel by the username “jackthedripper.” The group was made up of two dozen people who regularly discussed guns, video games and racist memes.

A member of the original channel insisted to the New York Times that the leaker was not a whistleblower and had not intended for the confidential materials to end up anywhere other than his group chat.

“This guy was a Christian, a pacifist, he just wanted to let some of his friends know what was going on,” one member told the newspaper. “We have some people in our group who are in the Ukraine. We like fighting games, we like war games.”

But another member told the Washington Post: “He is a smart person. He knew what he was doing when he published these documents, of course. These were not accidental leaks of any kind.”

At least one of the members said the leaker had access to the intelligence materials through his work, though none of them wanted to identify him by name.

They pointed out how the leaker took pictures of the classified documents to share in their chat, and that some of the furniture in the background matched items visible in their Discord video chats.