(Ken Silva, Headline USA) When the U.S. government arrested 21-year-old Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira in April for allegedly leaking classified Pentagon documents, prosecutors said he needed to be kept in pretrial detention because he’s a criminal with an “arsenal of weapons”—including AR- and AK-style weapons, and a “bazooka.”
Most media reported on the U.S. government’s claim uncritically.
But law enforcement never charged Teixeira with having a bazooka, and they never produced any photographs or other evidence of the weapon. The only evidence released about Teixeira’s “arsenal” were several orange-tipped apparent airsoft guns, as pictured above.
Seeking to discover whether the bazooka even exists, Headline USA filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the ATF for an inventory of the weapons seized from Teixeira.
However, the ATF declined the request.
“The information you requested is related to ongoing litigation,” the bureau said in a letter on Tuesday.
Teixeira, who is remains in pretrial detention, is accused of being the solider responsible for the trove of internal Defense Department documents known as the “Discord leaks”—named for the fact that he allegedly leaked the records on a Discord server used by him and his friends for online gaming.
The documents show, among other things, that the U.S. has boots on the ground in Ukraine, that the U.S. the Biden administration spied on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and that the war there was going worse for Ukraine that officials were saying publicly—while shoveling more than $100 billion toward that effort.
But instead of being hailed as a whistleblower for exposing Biden’s lies and malfeasance, mainstream media outlets and Democrat politicians have accused him of being a traitor. The New York Times and government-funded publication Bellingcat went as far as help the FBI identify Teixeira as the alleged leaker.
Since then, the FBI has reportedly been visiting the homes of people who posted stories about the leaked Pentagon documents in an “intimidating” attempt to remove such content from the internet.
SpyTalk reported earlier this month that one of its readers, former U.S. Army “information warfare expert” Paul Cobaugh, was visited by the FBI last week over an article he posted on his LinkedIn account about the Pentagon leaks in April.
Cobaugh said the FBI agents’ visit “scared the hell out of my wife and still does.”
“I believe it was a message of sorts,” he told SpyTalk, adding that he refuses to be intimidated.
“Me, I’m too damn old and stubborn to quit the fight for truth and integrity,” he said.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
