Tony Shaffer to Newsmax: DOJ Probe on Leaks ‘Raises Red Flags’

The FBI and Department of Justice investigation of the leak of classified Pentagon documents “raises red flags” and even more questions about how Jack Douglas Teixeira, a 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, was able to get hold of the items he’s accused of leaking, retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, the president of Project Sentinel, said on Newsmax Saturday. 

“Why on earth are the FBI and DOJ investigating the Pentagon, when the Pentagon has adequate and substantial counterintelligence investigative forces?” Shaffer said on Newsmax’s “Wake Up America.” “I started off as an Army counterintelligence special agent. Army, Air Force could have done a credible job of getting to the bottom of this.

“But for some reason, the DOJ, which has not been known for their integrity, is the one in there doing the investigation?” Shaffer asked.

The leaked documents pose a “significant” threat to the United States and its allies, some of whom have been “walking away from the Biden administration,” Shaffer said. 

“Everything you see failing relating to foreign policy essentially has been shown in great detail in these leaked documents,” he said. “The Biden administration simply has no ability to function in a cohesive way. And the fact that they are … failing across the board is showing constantly now.”

Shaffer also on Saturday spoke out about President Joe Biden’s response to the leaks, after the president commented that he was “not concerned about the leak. I’m concerned that it happened. But there’s nothing contemporaneous that I’m aware of that is of great consequence.”

“Everything we’re seeing right now that we saw in these documents just indicates how badly managed the whole foreign policy and national security program is,” said Shaffer. “Biden just pretending nothing bad is happening indicates to me that he’s either not mentally there to understand the damage or, frankly, he doesn’t care.”

Meanwhile, Shaffer said he doesn’t think it will accomplish much to investigate Discord, the social media platform where the classified documents were initially linked, as “pretty much anybody can post anything.”

Instead, it must be determined “how this young kid, 21 years old, got hold of these top-secret documents,” he said.

Shaffer noted that when he was still in the military, he worked in highly classified intelligence collection, including putting information into reports such as the ones that were disclosed. 

“Those are from a very high level,” he said. “One set was from the CIA; one set was from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs level. That’s very high.”

Shaffer said when he worked in such intelligence, “we would walk in with the folder. We would take out the content and show it to the principal [official]. They would sign it that they [saw] it, and we put it back in the folder and walked out. No physical artifacts were ever left behind.”

But in the case of the leaked items, “this kid seemed to have printouts of these highly classified documents, so there’s a big piece missing here.”

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