- Jack Teixeira, 21, was charged with leaking secret Pentagon documents last month.
- The Air National Guard member was preparing for a violent "race war," The Washington Post found.
The Pentagon leak suspect Jack Teixeira was preparing for what he envisioned would be a violent "race war," according to The Washington Post.
Teixeira, a 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guard member, was arrested last month in connection with the leak of dozens of top-secret Pentagon documents about the war in Ukraine and other national security issues.
The Washington Post said it uncovered his racist views and suspicion of the government by interviewing several of his close friends and reviewing previously unpublished videos and chat logs.
"He used the term 'race war' quite a few times," a close friend of Teixeira's, who spoke to the Post on the condition of anonymity, said.
"He did call himself racist – multiple times," the friend said. "I would say he was proud of it."
The Post obtained a video of Teixeira shooting a semiautomatic rifle, using antisemitic and antiblack language, and saying his response is to "mag dump."
Teixeira, who viewed himself as a politically conservative Orthodox Christian, appeared to be preparing for a violent struggle against perceived adversaries, including Black people, liberals, Jews, gay and transgender people, the paper reported.
It was previously revealed in court documents that he had a small arsenal of guns in his army-themed bedroom, talked about mass shootings, and had a history of making violent and "racist" threats.
Teixeira also told friends that he was worried about what was to come when Black Lives Matter protests spread across the United States in 2020.
"He was afraid they would target White people," his friend told the Post. "He had told me quite a few times he thought they need to be prepared for a revolution."
Despite sharing classified documents with his online companions on a Discord server, Teixeira did not consider himself a whistleblower, his friends said, per the Post.
Instead, he acted on a deep suspicion of the government and wanted his peers online to "be prepared for things the government might do, reinforcing to them that the government was lying to them," his close friend, who was also a member of the server said.
His online presence also revealed conspiratorial thinking and further racist thinking, including about Jewish people and Muslims.
"He had quite a few conspiratorial beliefs," his friend told the paper, adding: "I remember him multiple times talking about things like Waco and Ruby Ridge and talking about how the government kills their own people."
Teixeira joined the Air National Guard in September 2019 and was given "Top Secret" security clearance in 2021, which gave him access to the classified documents leaked online, according to a criminal complaint.
He now faces up to 25 years in prison.