- The GOP chairman of the House intel committee criticized MTG for praising the alleged Pentagon leaker.
- If the alleged leaker is found guilty, Rep. Michael Turner said, "That's not someone to look up to."
GOP Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio, chairman of the House intelligence committee, rejected the notion that the alleged Pentagon leaker, Jack Teixeira, is a hero who exposed the truth about the war in Ukraine — as some Republicans like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia have suggested.
Margaret Brennan of CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday asked Turner for his reaction to praise of Teixeira from Greene and other prominent conservatives like Fox News' Tucker Carlson.
Turner forcefully rebuked Greene's false suggestion that Teixeira "told the truth about troops being on the ground in Ukraine," underscoring that the US military is not directly involved in the Ukraine war and has no troops fighting against the Russian invaders.
"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," Turner went on to say of Teixeira, 21, an Air National Guardsman who was charged with unauthorized retention and transmission of national defense information and unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents by prosecutors in federal court last week.
"That's not someone to look up to. 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," Turner said.
A spokesperson for Greene did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the criticism from Insider.
—Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) April 17, 2023
Teixeira, who was an IT specialist on Otis Air Force Base in Massachusetts and had top secret clearance, is suspected of leaking what could be hundreds of secret Pentagon documents. Many of the leaked documents, which made their way across various online platforms in recent months, related to the war in Ukraine.
The highly classified documents offered a window into US spying on friends and foes alike. The leak — the most significant intelligence breach for the US military in roughly a decade — has placed the US in a precarious position with allies. Military experts have also raised concerns that the leak could hurt Ukraine on the battlefield.
Though the available evidence suggests that Teixeira allegedly leaked the documents largely out of a desire to impress about two dozen online gamer friends, Republicans like Greene have suggested without evidence that he had grand motives and have portrayed him as a whistleblower.
"Many are calling Jake Teixeira [sic] a hero for pulling back the flimsy transparent curtain and revealing what we suspected all along," Greene, an opponent of US aid to Ukraine and close ally of former President Donald Trump, said in a tweet. Greene also groundlessly implied that Teixeira was being singled out because he's "white, male, christian, and antiwar."
Teixeira asked his friends to delete any secret files he shared with them after news of the leak broke, according to a gamer's account to the Washington Post. There's little evidence he was vying to become a whistleblower.
Other Republicans have also criticized Greene over her comments. "There is no justification for this, and for any member of Congress to suggest it's okay to leak classified information, because you agree with a cause is terribly irresponsible and puts America in serious danger," Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who also has close ties to Trump, told ABC News on Sunday.