Crooked Media - What A Day: New phone, who Discord?

You know those hundreds of highly-classified American national-security documents that were leaked on to a Discord server in one of the largest national security breaches in modern American history? Well, today, we finally learned more about who did it.
 

• After over a week of frantic speculation, FBI officers arrived at the Massachusetts home of 21-year-old Jack Teixeira, an IT specialist and Air National Guardsman, believed to be the source of the massive intelligence leak, and arrested him without incident. In a brief statement, Attorney General Merrick Garland did not speak to the suspect’s motive, but according to members of the private Discord channel, Teixeira leaked the documents in an effort to…show off to his online buddies. 
   

• Okay so that immediately raises the question: Why in the hell did a 21-year-old, low-ranking National Guardsman have access to these documents in the first place? Why are we staring down the barrel of what the Pentagon has called a “very serious risk to national security” because of, ostensibly, some random kid? Well, Teixeira was a “cyber transport systems specialist” or, the IT specialist responsible for military communications networks, which gave him a higher-level security clearance than people at his rank normally get. That doesn’t exactly answer the other question of why he wasn’t better screened, but okay. 
   

• Teixeira is expected to make his initial court appearance on Friday. He was arrested mere hours after the New York Times revealed his name (which the National Guard has yet to confirm) and less than a day after the Washington Post published the bizarre tale of his leak and supposed motivations. Perhaps there’s more to it than youth and young boredom. This may be the most damaging leak of classified U.S. intelligence in years. But the Discord channel where he posted the documents was called, heaven help us, “Thug Shaker Central,” where about 20-30 members (mostly young men and teenage boys) shared their love of guns, video games, and racist memes.

So where do national security protocols go from here?
 

• Following this intelligence breach, the Pentagon began drafting new restrictions limiting who across government agencies receives highly-classified daily intelligence briefings. The Joint Staff, or the DOD’s most senior uniformed leaders who advise the president, began scrutinizing distribution lists after many of the leaked documents appeared to have markings indicating that they had been produced by the Joint Staff’s intelligence arm. 
   

• Hours after Teixeira’s arrest, Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH), who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, issued a statement vowing to investigate “why this happened, why it went unnoticed for weeks, and how to prevent future leaks.” A senior U.S. official told CNN, “Way too many people have access to very sensitive information,” and that likely “thousands” of people saw these highly-classified documents before they were leaked onto the internet. This round of leaked documents has exposed the lingering vulnerabilities in government intelligence management systems after Edward Snowden’s disclosures in 2013. Snowden worked as a contractor, but had much more experience  than Teixeira. 

Teixeira will be charged under the Espionage Act, and will most likely spend a long time in prison, but the Pentagon also needs to accept responsibility for continued information-security failures, and insufficient screening of the people who are granted access to our most sensitive national secrets. (On the other hand, if you have awesome state secrets to share, we as journalists would love to have a looksee ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.)

In the latest episode of Stuck with Damon Young, Damon welcomes AV Rockwell, writer and director of the Sundance award winning "A Thousand and One" to unpack Rockwell's sources of inspiration for the film and how it relates to her upbringing in New York City. Later in the episode, Ted Lasso's Kola Bokinni joins Damon to examine the transition from a "parent's partner" to a "step-parent." 

Do not miss out! Listen to Stuck with Damon Young for free only on Spotify.

Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis has sanctioned Fox News and its parent company for withholding evidence in the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems, and will now weigh whether further investigation and censure are warranted. Let’s fucking go!!! Lawyers for Dominion reportedly played recordings made by Fox News producer Abby Grossberg in 2020 which were not handed over to Dominion’s lawyers during the lawsuit’s “discovery” phase. Grossberg has herself sued Fox News and said that her deposition was coerced, while also claiming she had recorded conversations with Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and other (regrettably) influential GOP names. The sanction allows Dominion to conduct another deposition at Fox’s expense. This new evidence and resulting sanction have come just days before the trial is set to begin. Judge Davis has also indicated he is considering appointing a special master to investigate the actions of Fox’s legal teams. Honey, it’s getting good!

The Florida state legislature passed a six-week abortion ban on Thursday that will be the most restrictive in the nation. The ban would provide exceptions for abortions to take place until 15 weeks in cases of rape, incest, or human trafficking, if the pregnant person can “provide documentation” “proving” those circumstances, which is to say that this is as close to a total abortion ban as we’ve seen. 

Billionaire Republican mega-donor and Nazi trinket collector Harlan Crow bought property from Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in 2014 above market value, a transaction that Thomas was never disclosed by Thomas. We can’t expect the man sitting on the highest court in the land to have known the laws about that!

Jury selection has begun in the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit against Fox News. Get your popcorn all slathered in Rudy Giuliani’s hair grease!

Disgraced former president Donald Trump was questioned under oath on Thursday in a civil fraud lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James. 

Federal officials from the Department of Labor have fined a Comfort Inn hotel in Tennessee for reportedly employing two children younger than 12. The hotel’s parent company, Pigeon Forge Hospitality LLC, also didn’t pay the workers the federal minimum wage or overtime, according to officials. One employee is owed nearly $31,000 in stolen wages. 

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) has asked Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to (temporarily) replace her on the Judiciary Committee so that Biden’s judicial nominees can be confirmed, but has still given no specific indication of when she will return to the Senate from sick leave.

Police have arrested a man suspected of fatally stabbing Cash App founder Bob Lee earlier this month in San Francisco. According to police, Lee knew his killer.

A 29-year-old Indiana man named Joshua McLemore had been diagnosed with schizophrenia as a young adult, and subsequently struggled with psychosis and drug use. When he was found in his apartment naked, confused, and incoherent, he was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. But instead of receiving medical care, he was arrested and moved to Indiana’s Jackson County Jail. There, McLemore was placed in solitary confinement with no bed, sink, or toilet for 20 days while in active psychosis, covered in his own urine and feces for much of that period. By the time jail officials finally sought medical help for him, it was too late. He died of “multiple organ failure due to refusal to eat or drink.” According to a civil lawsuit filed by McLemore’s family against Jackson County, jail officials and the private corporation contracted to provide health-care services for inmates violated McLeMore’s 14th Amendment rights, “causing him unnecessary pain and suffering and, ultimately, an avoidable death.” McLemore’s lawyers were able to obtain hundreds of hours of surveillance footage from the jail documenting his deterioration with no intervention. This is a horrifying yet all-too-common scenario for hundreds of thousands of people in the United States living with severe mental illness who end up in our nation’s jails, not mental health facilities. 

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Tennessee state-Rep. Justin Pearson (D-TN) was sworn back into his seat, less than a week after his Republican colleagues expelled him for encouraging a protest against lax gun laws at the state capitol.

The Arizona House of Representatives expelled a Republican lawmaker and proponent of the Big Lie because she organized a presentation accusing politicians, judges, and politicians of both parties of unsubstantiated claims. 

President Biden has asked Lady Gaga to co-chair the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. Gaga, wear the meat dress to your first official duties!

Speaking of the president, he seems to be having a really nice time in Ireland, and got something of a hero’s welcome in the Irish Parliament. 

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) continued her streak of good legislation, signing two new gun-control bills into law today, two months after a mass shooting at Michigan State University.