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- Jack Teixeira, a Massachusetts Air National Guard member, received a 15-year prison sentence.
- He leaked classified military documents on Discord, including information on Russia's war in Ukraine.
BOSTON — Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira was sentenced in US District Court Tuesday to 15 years in prison for leaking highly classified military documents online, including records related to Russia's war in Ukraine, in what prosecutors call "one of the most significant and consequential violations of the Espionage Act in American history."
Teixeira, 22, who has remained in custody since his arrest in April 2023, pleaded guilty in March to six counts of willful retention and transmission of classified information relating to national defense over a leak last year of a trove of classified records, which included information concerning the provision of equipment to Ukraine and how it would be used in response to Russia's later invasion, to a group of gamers on the messaging app Discord.
Ahead of his sentencing by District Court judge Indira Telwani, Teixeira also entered into a written agreement to resolve separate military charges brought by the Air Force in his court-martial next March that he obstructed justice and failed to obey a lawful order, defense lawyer Michael Bachrach said in court.
Before his arrest, Teixeira had been an Airman First Class at Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, where he worked as a cyber defense operations journeyman or information technology support specialist.
Despite being a low-level airman, Teixeira held a top-secret security clearance, and starting in January 2022, began accessing hundreds of classified documents related to topics including Russia's invasion of Ukraine, according to prosecutors.
Teixeira shared classified information on the chatting app Discord in private servers while bragging that he had access to "stuff for Israel, Palestine, Syria, Iran and China," even though his superiors admonished him twice in 2022 about his handling of classified information and warned him against conducting deep dives into intelligence information, prosecutors say.
Teixeira's lawyers in court papers said he "sincerely regrets the decisions that he made and the harm it has caused," and they urged Talwani to only impose an 11-year term.
They said the autistic, isolated young man's intent was never to harm the US but to educate friends he made online about world events, including the Ukraine war, with Teixeira calling it "the biggest event or thing that happened in (his) generation's history" in a February debriefing session with the intelligence community, according to court papers.
