A federal grand jury indicted the 21-year-old Air National Guardsman accused of leaking hundreds of highly classified Pentagon documents on Thursday.
Jack Teixeira was indicted on six counts of willful retention and transmission of classified information related to the national defense. He faces up to 10 years in prison, up to three years of supervised release, and a fine of up to $250,000 for each count.
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The Massachusetts air national guardsman was arrested on April 13 following a manhunt into who had leaked the documents, and a judge granted the prosecution’s motion to keep him behind bars while awaiting trial on May 19.
“The unauthorized removal, retention and transmission of classified information jeopardizes our nation’s security. Individuals granted access to classified materials have a fundamental duty to safeguard the information for the safety of the United States, our active service members, its citizens and its allies,” Acting United States Attorney Joshua S. Levy said on Thursday. “We are committed to ensuring that those entrusted with sensitive national security information adhere to the law.”
Teixeira was accused of first taking notes on classified information to share those details in a private group on the platform Discord, and he later allegedly began printing documents out, taking them home, photographing them, and then posting in the group. The documents were only discovered when someone in the chat began posting them on other social media platforms, though he had allegedly been doing it for months by the time of his arrest.
He was reprimanded twice for the improper handling of classified material in Sept. and October 2022, though in neither case did it rise to the level of restricting his access. In January, he was seen using a Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System machine and the person who saw him, found him viewing "content not related to his primary duty and was related to the intelligence field," according to a filing by prosecutors.
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Teixeira's alleged leak included hundreds of documents detailing the reach of the U.S. intelligence community and revealed key information regarding allies and adversaries alike.
The Pentagon is reviewing its procedures surrounding the handling of classified credentials and information, while the Air Force is conducting its own investigation. The commander and the detachment commander overseeing administrative support of Teixeira's unit have both been temporarily suspended amid the fallout of the extraordinary leaks.