United States Attorney General Merrick Garland confirmed on Thursday the arrest of a man suspected of leaking dozens of highly classified defense documents online about the conflict in Ukraine.
Suspect Jack Douglas Teixeira “was arrested without incident” and must appear soon before the US District Court for the state of Massachusetts (northeast), Garland said at a brief press conference.
It is believed that Teixeira, 21, is an alleged member of the Air National Guard of that same state, and leader of a small group of video game players. It is then suspected that he was responsible for supervising the private online group “Thug Shaker Central”, made up of around 20 participants, who used the chat to talk about weapons and share memes, according to one of the reports.
Days before, the president of the United States, Joe Biden, while on his visit to Ireland, had indicated that the authorities were about to catch the person responsible for such an event.
“There is an ongoing investigation, as you know, with the intelligence service and the Department of Justice. They are close to arresting him, ”he explained without giving further details.
Why are you so worried about your leak?
In recent days, the Pentagon reportedly shared the news that there had been a leak of important documents, which they addressed international issues, including the conflict in Ukraine, and issues related to China and the Middle East.
The leaked information contains details about the Russian military operation, as well as intercepted reports about US allies, such as Israel and South Korea.
As reported by the American The Wall Street Journal, All this began in January of this year, but it was not relevant until April, when the magnitude of the leak could be measured. Therefore, “hundreds” of documents would have been released, which had initially been hosted on the Discord messaging platform until the beginning of March.
Later, another user took a dozen of these, and He published them in a group with a larger audience (the information reaching more and more people), in which people who play the Minecraft video game participate, and others appeared on a Telegram channel.
The United States Department of Justice had to initiate a criminal investigation, and thus find those responsible. Until this Thursday, April 13, the White House spokeswoman, Karine Jean-Pierre, announced that the Pentagon applied greater restrictions on leaked documents with confidential information, given the security situation for the country.
“We are considering difficulties for national security, May I add that, in order to reduce the impact that the release of these documents may have on the national security of the United States and also of our allies and partners, we take it very seriously, the investigation is ongoing and the Department of Defense has taken steps to limit these documents,” he said at a press conference.
