The FBI arrested a Massachusetts Air National Guard member in connection with a significant leak of classified Pentagon documents. Attorney General Merrick Garland identified the suspect as Jack Teixeira, 21, and said he’d been arrested “without incident,” Politico reports. Garland commented after live video from local television stations showed FBI personnel swarming a home in North Dighton, Mass. and leading a young male suspect from the residence. Teixeira was arrested “in connection with the unauthorized removal, retention and transmission of classified national defense information,” the attorney general said, using language that tracks violations of the Espionage Act. Teixeira is expected to appear in federal court in Boston on Friday.
The FBI confirmed Teixeira’s arrest and said it related to “his alleged involvement in leaking classified U.S. government and military documents.” The 21-year-old appears to have been part of a small group on the Discord social media platform. He first wrote about the sensitive information in paragraphs paraphrased from the documents months ago. Starting in January, he began posting photographs of printouts of the documents, which had been folded and smoothed out. The Washington Post first reported Thursday that the person who leaked the documents on Discord worked on a military base. Teixeira was reportedly considered the leader of the small Discord channel and espoused a love for guns and God. The documents Teixeira allegedly leaked contained highly classified information, including from papers marked “Top Secret,” about the war in Ukraine and other global topics such as China, Iran and the Russian paramilitary group, Wagner.