- Trump's allies are rushing to the defense of the accused Pentagon leaker.
- MTG suggested Jack Teixeira is being singled out for being "white, male, christian, and antiwar."
Prominent figures associated with former President Donald Trump and the far right have rushed to the defense of Jack Teixeira, the 21-year-old Air National Guardsman who has been charged in connection with the leak of dozens of secret Pentagon documents. To them, Teixeira is a martyr for revealing the truth about the stalemated war in Ukraine to the American people.
But accounts of why he allegedly shared the secrets paint a more complicated picture.
Rather than a feeling of grand patriotism, Teixeira was largely driven by a desire to inform and impress the mostly teenage gamers he befriended online, according to accounts by those friends reported by the Washington Post and New York Times. Known to them mostly as OG, he didn't intend for the documents to be shared across the internet to provoke a broad public debate about continued US support for the war or the gathering and dissemination of US intelligence. He also reportedly expressed racist and antisemitic views in discussions with his gamer friends.
Teixeira was arraigned in federal court Friday in Boston and has not entered a plea. The documents that made their way out of the gamer chat have included revelations about the Ukraine's war against Russian invaders, to which the US has provided extensive support. To prominent far right voices like Tucker Carlson and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, that makes Teixeira a truth-exposer who's being unfairly prosecuted.
"Teixeira is white, male, christian, and antiwar. That makes him an enemy to the Biden regime. And he told the truth about troops being on the ground in Ukraine and a lot more," Greene said in a tweet. In another, Greene said that "many are calling Jake Teixeira a hero for pulling back the flimsy transparent curtain and revealing what we suspected all along."
Insider asked a spokesperson for Greene whether she's aware of the reports indicating Teixeira made anti-Semitic remarks and reportedly did not intend for these documents to reach anyone beyond the gamers in his Discord group.
"You seem to be putting words in Congresswoman Greene's mouth," Greene's spokesperson, Nick Dyer, said in response. "Shame on you. You aren't a journalist, you are a Democrat activist working as a Biden administration propagandist," he added.
'Treating him like Osama bin Laden'
Teixeira, who worked as an IT specialist at Otis Air Force Base in Massachusetts and had top secret clearance, initially shared images of the documents in a private group on Discord a messaging platform popular with gamers, per the Post. The documents eventually trickled out of that Discord group, known as Thug Shaker Central, making their way other online and social media platforms like Twitter, Telegram, and 4chan.
After the leaks were first reported on by the New York Times, the US government scrambled to locate the source and Teixeira was arrested roughly a week later. Attorney General Merrick Garland said Teixeira was taken into custody "without incident."
Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who has echoed the Kremlin's propaganda on Ukraine, on Thursday night said that Teixeira was being treated worse than Osama bin Laden, the Al Qaeda terrorist leader who was killed during a Navy SEAL raid in 2011.
"Tonight, the news media are celebrating the capture of the kid who told Americans what's actually happening in Ukraine," Carlson said. "They are treating him like Osama bin Laden, maybe even worse actually, because, unlike Al Qaeda, apparently, this kid is a racist."
While making the case that Ukraine was actually losing the war, Carlson shared bogus casualty figures from an altered version of one of the leaked documents that misleadingly slashed the number of estimated Russian casualties in the war. Even as he shared the discredited information, Carlson lamented that the "telling the truth is the only real sin" in Washington.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump Jr. in a tweet suggested that Teixeira would be a "hero" to the "media & to the left if he leaked that the Trump Administration was waging an unlawful war against a nuclear super-power without the knowledge of the people or the approval of Congress." Trump Jr. was seemingly and falsely implying that the US was waging a war in Ukraine. Though the US has supplied Ukraine with billions in security aid, including weapons, it does not have troops directly involved in the fight against Russia; one secret document revealed that in late February 14 US special operations troops were in Ukraine, and US officials insist they are not involved in combat.
The emerging effort by the far right to defend Teixeira connects to a broader campaign by Republicans, particularly Trump, to undermine US support for Kyiv. Trump, considered to be the frontrunner for the 2024 GOP nomination, has railed against US aid to Ukraine amid Russia's unprovoked invasion.
The leaks could hurt Ukraine on the battlefield
The leak of the documents allegedly perpetrated by Teixeira represents the worst US military intelligence breach in roughly a decade. The Pentagon said the leaks post a serious risk to US national security.
The secret documents offered details on US spying on friends and foes alike, many of which pertained to the war in Ukraine. Some of the documents pointed to weaknesses in Ukraine's air defenses and expressed a lack of confidence in its ability to launch a successful counteroffensive this spring. Other documents exposed the extent of US intelligence on Russia's military and intelligence apparatus, revealing that the US has been able to warn Kyiv about upcoming Russian strikes.
In many ways, one of the biggest stories surrounding the leak is the fact it happened at all. It's an embarrassment for the US that raises questions about its ability to safeguard its secrets, and places Washington in an unsettling position with allies — particularly those it shares intelligence with. The Biden administration has signaled that it's taken steps to limit how sensitive information is shared.
"I'm not concerned about the leak. I'm concerned that it happened," President Joe Biden told reporters on Thursday.
That said, military experts have still expressed serious concerns that the leak could hurt Ukraine on the battlefield by offering Russia information on the assessed shortcomings of Ukrainian forces. Moscow could also potentially take steps to limit the US's ability to eavesdrop on its military and intelligence agencies, making it harder to predict what Russia will do next on the battlefield in Ukraine and beyond.
"This is not the first time classified documents have been leaked but it is one of the few times in recent history where the documents may have included information about ongoing military operations. That would make this doubly harmful," retired US Army Brig. Gen. Kevin Ryan, a former defense attaché to Russia, told Insider earlier this week.