Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Thursday afternoon that federal law enforcement officials have arrested 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira in connection with the leaking of classified U.S. military documents.
Garland said that FBI agents took Teixeira into custody this afternoon without incident in their investigation into “unauthorized removal, retention, and transmission of classified national defense information.”
Teixeira will have an initial appearance at the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, Garland said.
Roughly half a dozen FBI agents “pushed into a residence” and arrested Teixeira. Photos and videos posted on social media showed a large law enforcement presence outside the home as helicopters swarmed overhead.
🚨#BREAKING: A Air National Guard member has been taken into custody due to a classified documents discord leak
Just moments ago Law enforcement and other Federal agents agencies have made an arrest and searched the home of a 21-year-old Jack… pic.twitter.com/cD6bo7EkYa
— R A W S A L E R T S (@rawsalerts) April 13, 2023
The FBI addressed the arrest in a statement, saying that they took the suspect into custody and are “continuing to conduct authorized law enforcement activity at a residence in North Dighton, Massachusetts.”
“As this is an ongoing matter, we cannot provide further comment at this time,” the statement added.
The New York Times identified Teixeira as being the leader of an online Discord server where hundreds of photos of classified material was posted. The server, dubbed “Thug Shaker Central,” was comprised of a couple dozen like-minded men and boys.
A member of the group told The Washington Post that the alleged leaker, referred to as “OG,” expressed anti-government sentiment but they did not believe he was trying to help any foreign power, and they think he was trying to show off.
“If you had classified documents, you’d want to flex at least a little bit, like hey, I’m the big guy,” one member said, later adding, “I would definitely not call him a whistleblower. I would not call OG a whistleblower in the slightest.”
The documents that were leaked contained information about battlefield conditions in Ukraine, information on foreign adversary’s weapons systems, assessments on how deeply U.S. intelligence had penetrated into the Russian military, information on Egypt planning to sell weapons to Russia, and much more.
The report said there were numerous forensic clues left behind by the leaker that would likely prove to be highly useful for U.S. law enforcement in identifying the suspect.
President Joe Biden said this week that the U.S. authorities were “getting close” to catching the person responsible for the leak.
CNN reported Thursday that the FBI has narrowed down the number of people who could be responsible to a “small number” of suspects and is “working on building a case for prosecution.”
OG’s continued leaking of classified material eventually leaked out of the Discord server after one of the members started sharing the images on February 28 with another Discord server affiliated with a YouTuber that has nearly a quarter of a million subscribers. Several days later, on March 4, more of the images started to appear on a different Discord server dedicated to the Minecraft video game.
However, the leak would still not be detected by U.S. authorities for another month when classified documents started appearing on Russian Telegram channels and 4chan, before making their way onto Twitter.
OG reportedly panicked after learning that the images had been leaked and asked members to “keep low and delete any information that could possibly relate to him,” according to a member of the group.
This report has been updated to include additional information.