Pentagon leaker Jack Teixeira was sentenced to 15 years in prison Tuesday after admitting that he shared highly classified military documents about the war in Ukraine on Discord.
The disgraced 22-year-old former Massachusetts Air National guardsman will also be subject to three years of supervised release when his prison term is up, Boston federal court Judge Indira Talwani ruled.
The sentence follows Teixeira’s March guilty plea to six counts of willfully retaining and transmitting national defense information related to the unprecedented security breach.
Federal prosecutors had sought a maximum prison sentence of 200 months, or more than 16 years behind bars, for Teixeira – arguing that the ex-cyber transport systems journeyman “perpetrated one of the most significant and consequential violations of the Espionage Act in American history.”
“As both a member of the United States Armed Forces and a clearance holder, the defendant took an oath to defend the United States and to protect its secrets — secrets that are vital to US national security and the physical safety of Americans serving overseas,” prosecutors told the judge. “Teixeira violated his oath, almost every day, for over a year.”
Lawyers for Teixeira – a native of North Dighton, Mass., who enlisted in the US Air National Guard in 2019 – argued for the minimum sentence of 11 years in prison, citing the leaker’s post-arrest autism diagnosis and his ADHD.
“Jack is still essentially a child – at the very least, a ‘youthful offender’ – who has his whole life in front of him,” Teixeira’s attorneys wrote in a sentencing memo to Talwani.
His legal team described Teixeira as an isolated individual who didn’t intend to “harm the United States” and only sought to “educate his friends about world events.”
“To Jack, the Ukraine war was his generation’s World War II or Iraq, and he needed someone to share the experience with,” his attorneys wrote.
Teixeira was arrested at his mother’s house in April 2023 after being implicated in the disclosure of top-secret Pentagon documents detailing intelligence assessments of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including “how the equipment would be transferred, and how the equipment would be used upon receipt,” according to his federal indictment.
The former member of the Air National Guard’s 102nd Intelligence Wing posted the intelligence documents on a Discord chat room that he dubbed “Thug Shaker Central.”
Teixiera acknowledged in court that he abused his security clearance to transfer the classified material from government computer networks and print out and photograph the sensitive intelligence.
He was stationed at Otis Air National Guard Base in Cape Cod when he began posting classified documents online in January 2022, according to the Justice Department.
The astounding national security breach was considered the most serious since former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning leaked 700,000 documents, videos and diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks in 2010.
“The harm the defendant caused to the national security from his disclosures of national defense information is extraordinary,” prosecutors said ahead of Monday’s sentencing hearing. “By posting intelligence products on the social media platform Discord to feed his own ego and impress his anonymous friends, Teixeira caused exceptionally grave damage to the national security of the United States.”
“The scope of his betrayal is breathtaking,” they added.
As part of his plea agreement, Teixeira was ordered to sit for a debriefing with Pentagon and DOJ officials and turn over any sensitive documents that may still be in his possession.
Teixeira separately faces a military court-martial – scheduled for March – on charges alleging that he violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
With Post wires
