Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, over the weekend slammed those claiming the 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guard member accused of leaking classified U.S. intelligence is a “hero,” saying that he broke his oath to the United States and is a “traitor.”
Turner made the remarks on CBS News’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday while discussing with host Margaret Brennan the arrest of Jack Teixeira, who was taken into custody late last week.
Brennan noted how a small group of conservatives tried to paint Teixeira as a hero, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who tweeted: “Jake Teixeira is white, male, Christian, and antiwar. That makes him an enemy to the Biden regime. And he told the truth about troops being on the ground in Ukraine and a lot more. Ask yourself who is the real enemy? A young low level national guardsmen? Or the administration that is waging war in Ukraine, a non-NATO nation, against nuclear Russia without war powers?”
Turner responded by noting that “first of all, let’s be clear, there are no U.S. troops on the ground in Ukraine, other than the troops that are normally at an embassy, protecting the embassy. We do not have boots on the ground.”
“We do not have troops on the ground. So, it’s absolutely an incorrect assumption from the documents that this individual leaked,” he continued. “The other aspect is, he’s guilty of, if he’s brought through this process, and he’s found guilty, it will be of espionage, it’s of being a traitor to your country.”
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“That’s not someone to look up to,” he added. “That is someone who has compromised his country and has certainly compromised our allies. That’s not the oath that he took. That’s not the job that he took.”
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