Charges to be Filed Against Military Personnel Who Leaked Pentagon Secret Documents: CNN

An air national guard member, Jack Teixeira, has been charged with unauthorized retention and transmission of national defense information, as well as unauthorized removal of classified information and military documents, according to CNN.

The U.S. Department of Justice has requested the detention of the suspect until trial. This motion will be reviewed by the court on April 19.

The 21-year-old Teixeira has appeared in court in connection with the leak of Pentagon secret documents online. Investigators claim he began uploading documents in December, many of which were marked as 'top secret' as of December 2022.

According to court documents, the FBI used payment data from the social media platform Discord to identify the suspect in the document leak case. A representative from Discord stated that the platform is cooperating with the investigation and has banned all users related to the dissemination of classified information, as well as removed content that violates the platform's rules.

It is noted that Teixeira was managing the Discord chat where the documents were first disclosed. The FBI arrested him on April 13 following a week-long investigation.

On April 6, The New York Times reported that a batch of Pentagon secret documents had become publicly available on social media, relating to the Ukrainian military. Later, the newspaper reported that on April 7, a new tranche of classified documents appeared on social networks, reflecting U.S. policy 'from Ukraine to the Middle East and China.' These include, among other things, 'secret briefings on China, the Indo-Pacific region, the Middle East, and counterterrorism.'

The Pentagon has stated that it is determining the sources of the leaked classified materials on social media and assessing the scale of the leak, with the Justice Department and FBI joining the investigation.