Report: Discord admin who leaked military docs ID'd as National Guard airman [Updated]

[Update: On Thursday afternoon, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents arrested Jack Teixeira "without incident," The Washington Post reported. Charges are likely to follow. Anonymous sources identified Teixeira as the suspected source of leaked military documents, and officials are expected to continue investigating how Teixeira got access to the confidential materials.]

The leader of a private Discord server who allegedly leaked top-secret military documents has now been identified by "a trail of evidence" as Jack Teixeira, "a 21-year-old member of the intelligence wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard," The New York Times reported. US officials are now seeking to talk to Teixeira after days of searching for the leaker, including coordinating with Discord after the private server was deleted.

An earlier Washington Post report had identified the leaker as OG, a young man who was allegedly working on a military base while posting photos of hundreds of confidential documents for months on a private Discord server before US authorities caught on.

Members of the Discord server where the leak seemingly originated have been defensively protecting the target of the US manhunt--some of them teenage boys who told the Post that they wouldn't reveal his true identity because they consider OG to be "family" and an "uncle." These Discord community members told the Post that they had not yet been contacted by authorities.

While there's still some speculation about the documents' authenticity, the documents appear to detail national security secrets tied to US foreign adversaries and allies, including Russia, China, Ukraine, and South Korea.

The open source investigative site Bellingcat attempted to trace the origins of the leaked documents after the documents spread to popular Discord servers called "Minecraft Earth Map" and "End of Wow Mao Zone" and then to Telegram, 4Chan, and Twitter. Bellingcat found that the documents seemed to originate from a private Discord server hosting a tight-knit community of about 25 members called "Thug Shaker Central," but Bellingcat could not independently verify that fact because that server has since been deleted.

Discord did not immediately respond to Ars' request to comment on whether the server was deleted by admins or by Discord moderators. Discord community guidelines restrict engaging in illegal behavior or sharing false or misleading information that could cause societal harm.

The Times has now linked Teixeira to other members of Thug Shaker Central through his online gaming profile and matched details from the background of leaked document photos with images from his childhood home. Teixeira's mother, Dawn, told the Times that he had recently changed his phone number, and a man standing with Dawn in her driveway told the Times that Teixeira "needs to get an attorney" because "the Feds will be around soon."

In a press briefing this week, Chris Meagher, an assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, confirmed that some of the images shared online "seem altered," saying that "a Pentagon team continues to review and assess the veracity of the photographed documents that are circulating on social media sites and that appear in some cases to contain sensitive and highly classified material." Meager said that the department condemned the "unauthorized disclosure of classified information" and had launched an interagency effort with the White House to identify the leaker and assess the "impact these photographed documents could potentially have on US national security and on our allies and partners."

The Department of Defense told Ars that they have no further comment at this time.