The press is all over the news that a 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guard enlisted man, Jack Teixeira, was arrested for leaking classified documents, all to impress his internet circle of friends.

Over at 100percentfedup, a popular Michigan blog, the irony of that was noted:

Alleged Pentagon document leaker Jack Teixeira was arrested Thursday and, according to Attorney General Merrick Garland, is now being investigated for the “alleged unauthorized removal, retention, and transmission of classified national defense information.”

Social Media users have responded to the conflict by calling for the arrest of Alex Vindman.

In 2019, Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman admitted while being questioned by the House Intelligence Committee Tuesday that he had leaked information to an anti-Trump whistleblower at the center of the Democrats’ partisan impeachment proceedings of President Donald Trump. Vindman attempted to provide talking points to Trump prior to his “infamous” Ukraine phone call and then leaked a mischaracterization of the call afterward. 

...

Vindman was accused of leaking national security information but never served jail time.. One Twitter user made it clear that he believes there is a two-tiered system of justice in place. He said, “Despite destabilizing a Commander-in-Chief and helping provoke a war in Ukraine,” Vindman now goes on chat shows. Whereas Jack Teixeira leaked information showing how the government is lying to you and the world, [in] furtherance of those wars. He’s in a cell now.["]

Which does indeed underline a double standard in justice, given the severity of the charges and penalties small-fry Teixeira faces for his alleged misdeeds, and the lack of consequences of any kind for Vindman, as well as other leakers such as Hunter Biden, Andrew McCabe, Hillary Clinton and the rest, some of whom leaked to undercut President Trump and others who leaked to profit the Bidens. Teixeira's document dump leaked online undercut the Biden administration rather than the Trump administration, so in the era of Biden, the book was thrown. 

Ahh, but Teixeira was not a whistleblower, the leftist press has been saying.

Wasn't he? According to Agence France-Presse, the media, citing his "friends," described him this way:

The portrait painted in the US media by people who know Teixeira is more one of a naive young man seeking to impress friends than a crusading whistleblower intent on blowing open American secrets.

According to this report in the Washington Post, which quoted a teenager as denying that Teixeira leaked for whistleblowing purposes, the description they provided pretty well indicates he leaked for whistleblowing purposes:

One friend described Teixeira in an interview as patriotic, a devout Catholic and a libertarian with an interest in guns and doubts about America’s future.

Doubts about America's future?

Sounds like a whistleblower to me, given the motivation.

Perhaps the story was changed since I last read it, or perhaps I am misremembering the source, but I also recall a report specifically stating that Teixeira was unhappy about the U.S. involvement in the Ukraine war, which is supposedly why he leaked the document to his friends to "educate" them, which suggests even more pointedly that he would be some kind of whistleblower. I will update if I can find that source.

The WaPo also had this:

But OG had a dark view of the government. The young member said he spoke of the United States, and particularly law enforcement and the intelligence community, as a sinister force that sought to suppress its citizens and keep them in the dark. He ranted about “government overreach.”

OG told his online companions that the government hid horrible truths from the public. He claimed, according to the members, that the government knew in advance that a white supremacist intended to go on a shooting rampage at a Buffalo supermarket in May 2022.

More whistleblower fodder -- we heard a lot of that kind of talk in the 1960s and early 1970s when the Pentagon Papers were leaked.

Either way, both Vindman and Teixeira would both hold the same motives for their leaks, the same motives that other leakers and sellers of secrets dating at least back to the Pentagon Papers' Daniel Ellsberg and the Falcon and the Snowman 1970s, when Christopher Boyce justified his sale of classified secrets to the Russians in court as motivated by his outrage at U.S. spying on ally Australia.

These are pitiful cases, given the damage these small fry do to themselves, but they also are in the same class of cases as the high-ranking Washington swamp leakers, who leaked classified information to undercut President Trump, under cover of noble 'whistleblowing.' Those would include characters like former FBI director James Comey, who leaked through a friend at Columbia University various classified documents in order to reach the pages of the New York Times, and certainly Hunter Biden, who is credibly but circumstantially accused of copying classified documents (on Ukraine, same as Vindman and Teixeira) to corporate buyers and others. None of those characters has even remotely faced any consequences for their misdeeds and most continue to be feted in the press, or in the case of Hunter, continually shielded based on his relationship to Joe Biden, no matter how many sleazy, skeevy, corrupt things he does.

It's impunity like this that seeds the ground for leakers like Reality Winner and now Jack Teixeira, both of whom were also small-fry whistleblowers of sorts, certainly not important swamp things with political cover and protection. The fish rots from the head down, and so many leaks with impunity from the top has pretty well sent the message to the little guys that leaks are nothingburgers -- until the small fry learn to their surprise that they aren't in the same protected class as the big guys.

Something's wrong with this picture and far more arrests are warranted than the low-level fall guys we are seeing get the book thrown at them right now.

Image: Monica Showalter, based on screen shot from PBS via YouTube video. Image edited.

Hat tip: GatewayPundit