The FBI is looking into the activities of a former U.S. Navy petty officer who oversaw the social media account involved in the spreading of intelligence documents allegedly leaked by Airman First Class Jack Teixeira, U.S. officials said Monday.
The Wall Street Journal reported the officer, Sarah Bils, oversaw numerous pro-Russian outlets while in uniform; however, the scope of the investigation could not be determined.
Bils left the Navy in November, having served at the U.S. naval air station on Whidbey Island.
"She is actively under federal investigation, but the circumstances of the content of the investigation are unclear at this time," a U.S. official said.
The FBI sent agents to Bils' home in Oak Harbor, Washington, on Sunday.
Bils told the Journal the FBI is probing death threats against her. She said she discussed the leak of classified documents with the FBI and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) and she was not the only administrator of the site that the leaked documents appeared on.
"I have been forthright and honest with the FBI and NCIS in regards to what my clearances were and what I had access to, which was literally nothing," Bils said. "I didn't leak the documents and they've never even been in my possession."
Bils told the Journal she is an administrator of the Donbass Devushka Telegram account, which had reposted four leaked documents from numerous obscure online chat rooms. Bils also said she was not the one who posted them and she had later deleted them. The files stayed on the account for a few days.
Bils hosts a podcast under the Donbass Devushka, or Donbas Girl, persona, which, according to the Journal, actively promotes the Russian view of the war in Ukraine. Even though she was in uniform, the accounts Bils had set up and ran promoted the Russian military and the Wagner Group.
The Donbass Devushka Telegram account posted four of the allegedly leaked documents to its 65,000 followers April 5, which led numerous large Russian social media accounts to pick them up. The Pentagon then launched an investigation.
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