Mass. Air National Guardsman Charged For Leaking Classified Documents

The 21-year-old Massachussettes Air National Guardsman accused of posting classified documents online was arraigned in federal court on Friday (April 14). Jack Teixeira was charged with unauthorized retention and transmission of national defense information and willful retention of classified documents.

Teixeira did not enter a plea and was ordered detained pending a detention hearing scheduled for next week.

Prosecutors said that Teixeira began posting classified documents in December 2022 to a private Discord server he ran. When Teixeira initially began publishing the documents, he transcribed them at work and then shared the text on the server. The affidavit says Teixeira was worried he would get caught copying the classified material, so he took them home and photographed them.

He then shared those photos to the Discord server. He continued to post the documents for several months until one of the users shared them on a public server, sparking a massive investigation into the embarrassing leak.

Officials said Teixeira didn't have access to specific documents as part of his job as a cybersecurity systems journeyman with the 102nd Intelligence Wing. However, because he worked on the network that housed classified data and could be in contact with documents during his job, he was required to have top secret/sensitive compartmented information clearance.

"This airman, even as a young man, his job was to work on this network that carried highly classified information," an official told CNN. "Because of this, the information carried on the network, people who work on it have to have that kind of clearance."

"It's not like your regular IT guy where you call a help desk, and they come fix your computer," the official added. "They're working on a very highly classified system, so they require that clearance."

Teixeira appeared to know he was under investigation. About a week before his arrest, he "used his government computer to search classified intelligence reporting for the word 'leak.'"

If convicted, Teixeria faces a maximum of ten years behind bars.