A member of a private online chat room leaked in highly classified U.S. documents told CNN in defense of 21-year-old Jack Teixeira, who was charged Friday in connection with the election. Other participants. Up until today. “Not to be surprised by the news cycle”.
“He was like a father to me,” said Teixeira, a retired member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, who was a 17-year-old boy in an online chat room known as Wacky. The couple bonded over video games, fitness and Christianity.
Waki Teixeira said he tried to pressure his Internet friends by sharing confidential information.
“It doesn’t push them into adolescence because of their weight,” Waki told CNN over the weekend on the social networking site Discord, explaining Teixeira’s motivation for sharing the material. “It’s like showing our friends not to be surprised by the news cycle. We knew what was happening to our taxes.
Teixeira has been accused of planting vast amounts of classified information, including classified information about the war in Ukraine, in a series of leaks that have alarmed Washington and US allies. He made his first appearance in federal court in Boston on Friday and pleaded not guilty.
The scandal has shed light on how the new U.S. military communicates online and the potential dangers of anonymity-focused gaming platforms like Discord. The US military uses Discord to recruit, but just last month the military was warned not to “post on Discord anything you don’t want the public to see.”
Teixeira, who appears to be the only service member using the chat, did not tell his online friends that the U.S. military documents he shared were classified, Wacky said. When asked if Teixeira understood he was breaking the law by releasing the document, Waki declined to comment.
Teixeira and Waki’s friendship has developed over the past four or five years, as Waki says they play zombie-fighting video games (“Left 4 Dead 2”) and build their own fantasy worlds (“Mod Cart”).
Teixeira and Waki were both members of Tug Shaker Central, a little-known dissenting chat that posted memoirs and discussed guns and religion. Then in March, photos of classified documents appeared in a second Discord chat called Wow Mao End Zone and were then shared on pro-Russia Telegram and Twitter.
Wacky admitted that some members of Thug Shaker Central posted racist stories, but said he did it as a joke. According to him, there are about two dozen people of different races in the chat. CNN was unable to reach other members of the panel to confirm this.
When asked if a person at Tug Shaker Central was concerned that the leaked documents would affect the war in Ukraine and the lives of soldiers, Waki said the documents should not be returned.
Gang Shaker Central’s membership is tight, Waki told CNN. “Usually it takes knowing A.” [real] Member IRL or online to trust you by playing with us. It’s like an electoral system.
Wacky said the FBI did not find them based on the investigation. A friend said she felt “terrible” a week after her arrest.
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