Air National Guardsman arrested in Pentagon leak, Justice Thomas under fire again: 5 Things podcast

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: Air National Guardsman arrested in Pentagon leak

USA TODAY Domestic Security Correspondent Josh Meyer has the latest after an Air National Guardsman was arrested in the Pentagon leak. Plus, the Biden administration will ask the Supreme Court to intervene on an abortion drug, USA TODAY Justice Department Correspondent Bart Jansen reminds us of other investigations surrounding former President Donald Trump, the Biden administration will expand health insurance coverage for 'Dreamers,' and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is under fire - again.

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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson and this is 5 Things you need to know Friday, the 14th of April 2023. Today, the latest surrounding an arrest connected with the Pentagon document leaks. Plus, the abortion pill legal fight heats up, and former President Donald Trump's legal troubles might be just beginning.

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We have a lot of political news for you today, starting with the latest development in the investigation into leaked documents from the Pentagon. I spoke with USA TODAY Domestic Security Correspondent Josh Meyer to learn more. Hi Josh, thanks for hopping on the show.

Josh Meyer:

My pleasure.

Taylor Wilson:

Can you just refresh us on what exactly was leaked from these documents and how the leak happened?

Josh Meyer:

Yeah, we don't know exactly how many documents were leaked. What we do know is that dozens of them, at least 50, perhaps more than 100, have been posted to this online messaging and chat app called Discord over the past couple of months. These are some very, very sensitive documents. Many of them are top secret and they discuss the status of the war in Ukraine, of the US effort to aid Ukraine in fighting that war, Russia's defense capabilities, and perhaps most awkward for us and most sensitive, is our spying on our enemies and our allies in terms of what they might be doing to help the war effort there. So it's a very embarrassing and problematic leak of information for the United States.

Taylor Wilson:

So an arrest has been made surrounding the leaks. What do we know right now?

Josh Meyer:

We're just finding out a lot more about this guy, but his name is Jack Teixeira. He's a 21-year-old member of the Intelligence Wing of the Massachusetts National Guard. And from what we can tell from public source information and from media reports is that he saw a private online group named Thug Shaker Central where about 20 to 30 people, most of them young men and teenagers, came together over a shared love of guns, racist online memes and video games. And so it was in there where he posted these and they were circulating for months apparently before the US government figured out that they were there. And he's now in custody and he's been charged and he's awaiting another court appearance.

Taylor Wilson:

So we have any sense right now of why Teixeira might have done this?

Josh Meyer:

We really don't. I mean, I think that people that have followed this Thug Shaker Central chat group, the New York Times and the Washington Post both have, speaking of armies, an army of reporters on this and they've been monitoring this chat group and his activities in it. What they have said is that he is sort of the administrator of this chat group. Friends who talked to the papers described him as older than most of the other group members, many of whom were in their teens, and the undisputed leader or OG of the group, which I guess stands for original gangster, and that he had claimed that he had access to intelligence documents through his job. According to these public reports, he wasn't posting them like some previous leakers like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden because they had problems with the US government and they were protesting domestic and foreign policies. At least according to these people that talked to the media, he was kind of just doing it to show off.

Taylor Wilson:

And if convicted, what punishments might Teixeira face here?

Josh Meyer:

Well, he could be in a lot of trouble. According to Attorney General Merrick Garland, it appears that he's going to be charged with violations of the Espionage Act in each count, which could mean theft of each individual document. According to some legal experts, each count could be several years up to 10 years in prison. So he's conceivably looking at a very long prison sentence. Traditionally in these cases, the sentence has been less than that, but they have been significant in some of these cases.

Taylor Wilson:

So we know that more than a million people have top security clearance, millions more have other clearances. Does that mean millions of vulnerabilities, Josh?

Josh Meyer:

It's a problem. After 9/11, the mantra was that we need to share everything with everybody. And so that really opened us up to a lot of vulnerabilities. You had intelligence agencies that were sharing with law enforcement agencies, with the military, and up and down the chain within their own agencies and with allies. So you have a lot of vulnerable points there. After 9/11 of course, there was also the creation of this sort of contractor deep state where you had millions of people that were brought on to help with the war effort. As you said, millions of them have top secret or secret security clearances, and a lot of them are potentially vulnerable. I mean, Edward Snowden was an intelligence contractor, and some of them are active duty. I mean, you had Chelsea Manning and you had Reality Winner who were both active duty Army and Air Force respectively who were very low level, but they had access to a phenomenal level, phenomenal amount of top secret intelligence that they then took and leaked.

Taylor Wilson:

All right, Josh Meyer, thanks for your insight here. Really appreciate it.

Josh Meyer:

My pleasure.

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Taylor Wilson:

The Biden administration said yesterday that it'll ask the Supreme Court to intervene so that Americans can continue to have expanded access to the abortion pill mifepristone. That includes through mail orders and without having to visit a doctor. The announcement came hours after a federal appeals court in Louisiana sided with the Biden administration on a key issue in an ongoing legal fight whether the 23-year-old FDA approval of the drug could continue. But the court balked at later actions by the agency that expanded access to the drug. The appeal will mark the most significant abortion dispute to reach the Supreme Court since a 5-4 majority last year overturned Roe v. Wade.

Meanwhile, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has signed a six-week abortion ban into law after the Republican-dominated Florida legislature approved the ban. But even with the governor's signature, the ban would only take effect if Florida Supreme Court rules against the state's current 15-week ban in an ongoing legal challenge. For all the latest on the abortion fight in America, stay with USATODAY.com.

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Former President Donald Trump may have been indicted this month, but as USA TODAY Justice Department Correspondent Bart Jansen reminds us, that's far from his only legal headache. Bart, thanks for coming on 5 Things today.

Bart Jansen:

Thanks for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

So Bart, we know there are all kinds of investigations still surrounding former President Donald Trump apart from the New York indictment. Let's start with the probe focused on classified documents.

Bart Jansen:

Justice Department's Special Counsel Jack Smith is actually conducting a two-pronged investigation. The most promising of which, according to legal experts, is one that looks at the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago, Trump's estate down in Florida. Federal authorities have retrieved more than 300 classified documents that were there at least a year after he left the White House in 2021. So Smith is dealing with possible charges dealing with the retention of those documents.

Taylor Wilson:

We now know that former Vice President Mike Pence is set to testify in the January 6th probe. How big of a deal will that be and what else can you tell us about that investigation?

Bart Jansen:

Yeah, former Vice President Mike Pence is considered a key witness in the January 6th investigation. As president of the Senate, he was overseeing the electoral college vote count on the day that a mob of Trump supporters overran the Congress, rampaged through the hallways, and actually chased him from the chamber and walked through the hallways chanting "Hang Mike Pence." Pence is expected to be able to give some insight into how Trump was trying to pressure him to disregard the electoral votes from a half dozen states, flip them, and then allow alternate electors to be counted so that those states would flip from President Joe Biden to support Trump. Pence refused to participate, but he can describe what kind of pressure Trump brought to bear on the case.

We know from witnesses in Pence's office that there was a call the morning of January 6th. Pence took it privately in another room, but he came back from the call looking grim and determined. So Pence could add a great deal of insight into the kind of pressure that Trump was bringing in trying to encourage the former vice president to basically change the way states voted in the presidential election.

Taylor Wilson:

And there's also an inquiry in Georgia focused on Trump's efforts to overturn election results. What's the latest here?

Bart Jansen:

Fulton County District Attorney Fannie Willis has been investigating possible election fraud dealing with former President Trump and others for more than a year. A special grand jury completed its work in December and a report was partially unsealed in February describing multiple indictments. Now, we don't know who they recommended be charged or what those charges are, but we've been waiting to see the results of Willis' investigation. This case deals with former President Trump calling Georgia's Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, on January 2nd, 2021. So four days before the riot at the Capitol, and encouraging him, urging him to try to find 11,780 votes, the number that he would need to beat Biden in that state.

Now, Trump has said that he was just trying to get him to investigate election fraud, that he wasn't trying to illegally steal the election, but Raffensperger assured him during the call that there was no widespread election fraud. In addition, Trump's campaign recruited alternate electors to be counted potentially by Pence in Washington when they counted up all the votes for the election. It's possible that there could be charges against those so-called fake electors for basically trying to take away the votes from Biden in Georgia and be replaced by Trump voters.

Taylor Wilson:

So Bart, in addition to being a former president, Trump is also a presidential candidate. How complicated are all of these investigations considering that we have an upcoming presidential campaign around the corner?

Bart Jansen:

Yeah, legal experts have wondered why charges in these various cases haven't been brought sooner. In each of the cases, the events that they are investigating happened years ago. In the case of the New York City charges against Trump, his next appearance isn't expected until December with a trial in January. Several legal experts that I've been talking to say that the Justice Department is traditionally reluctant to charge political candidates as you get closer to an election. Now, they're usually talking a few months before the election, so that's all the way into 2024. But, however these cases are resolved, you're looking at the potential for trials of a former president during the campaign season, and that would be quite unprecedented just as any charges against a former president are unprecedented.

Taylor Wilson:

Bart Jansen, thanks so much.

Bart Jansen:

Thanks for having me.

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Taylor Wilson:

The federal government will provide government health insurance to eligible undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children. That's part of a new initiative announced by the Biden Administration yesterday. The plan will allow people eligible for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, to use Medicaid, the state federal program designed for low income and disabled Americans, and to get healthcare.gov marketplace coverage through the Affordable Care Act. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, about 580,000 people are eligible for DACA, and 34% of those do not have health insurance coverage.

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GOP megadonor Harlan Crow purchased three Georgia properties from Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and members of his family in 2014. Thomas failed to note that on his annual disclosure forms. That's according to a report yesterday from ProPublica. It's the second time in as many weeks that Thomas has come under fire for his ties to Crow. Thomas and his wife have accepted luxury trips for years paid for by Crow. The developments have put pressure on the Supreme Court to adopt stricter ethics requirements to avoid potential conflicts of interest.

And today is National Dolphin Day. Dolphins are some of the smartest animals in the world and extremely social, but if you see them around when you're swimming this summer, you might want to keep your space. Officials in Hawaii last month accused 33 swimmers of harassing a pod of dolphins. The animals might be trying to sleep even if they're moving, something they do by resting half their brains and keeping the other half awake.

Thanks for listening to 5 Things. You can find us every day of the week right here wherever you get your audio. I'm back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA TODAY.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Pentagon leak arrest, Trump's multiple investigations: 5 Things podcast