A 21-year-old Air National Guard member suspected of leaking hundreds of classified intelligence documents was arrested by the FBI Thursday afternoon.
The New York Times identified Jack Teixeira, who served as the de facto leader of the Discord server where the leaks originated, as the suspect just before his arrest.
Texeira allegedly oversaw a private server on the Discord messaging platform, which consisted of 20-30 mostly young males in their teens and early 20s, according to the NYT.
Members of the server became close friends and came to revere the individual, whom the NYT identified as Texeira, known as “OG.” OG began posting hundreds of photos of classified documents on a private Discord server where OG functioned as an administrator and claimed to access the information from his job on a military base, two members told The Washington Post on condition of anonymity to discuss the matter while the FBI is conducting a criminal investigation.
The NYT spoke to four members of the online community, which grew out of a common interest in religion, military gear, and video games.
For example, his online gaming profile shows connections to the “Thug Shaker Central” discord server, and items visible on the margins of photos of the classified documents match photos the NYT discovered of items in Texeira’s home.
“This guy was a Christian, anti-war, just wanted to inform some of his friends about what’s going on,” one of OG’s friends told the NYT. “We have some people in our group who are in Ukraine.
President Joe Biden suggested earlier Thursday that the FBI’s investigation was coming to a close, according to the NYT. “There’s a full blown investigation going on, as you know, with the intelligence community and the Justice Department, and they’re getting close,” he said.
“He’s a smart person. He knew what he was doing when he posted these documents, of course. These weren’t accidental leaks of any kind,” one member of the Discord server told the Post.
