Former Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Tuesday for stealing classified information from the Department of Defense and sharing it online, the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts announced.
Teixeira’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment. Teixeira apologized, according to coverage of the hearing in federal district court by WJAR, an NBC affiliate in Providence, Rhode Island.
“All responsibility rests on my shoulders,” Teixeira said. “And I accept what that might entail.”
U.S. prosecutors had asked for a maximum sentence of 200 months, or about 17 years, under Teixeira’s agreement with federal prosecutors.
According to WJAR, Judge Indira Talwani noted that the document leak occurred after extensive training targeting the consequences of a breach and after Teixeira was warned about how to handle confidential material.
“Yet you posted hundreds of documents on the internet over the course of a year,” she said.
Teixeira’s lawyers said the sentence would exceed the maximum sentence of 200 months sought by the government for Julian Assange, who is accused of disclosing a trove of top secret documents. insisted.
They argued that Teixeira’s autism and feelings of isolation during the pandemic influenced his behavior.
Teixeira pleaded guilty in March to six counts of knowingly retaining and transmitting national defense information under the Espionage Act. The plea was part of an agreement that included a recommended sentence of 11 to 17 years in prison. He was arrested by the FBI in North Dighton, Massachusetts in April 2023 and has been in federal custody since mid-May 2023.
After Tuesday’s sentencing, Jody Cohen, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston office, described Teixeira as “one of the most prolific leakers of classified information in American history.”
At a news conference after the sentencing, Cohen said Teixeira posted confidential information online almost every day for more than a year. “He communicated that to his adversaries and allies around the world,” she said.
Acting U.S. Attorney Joshua S. Levy said Teixeira’s crimes put U.S. military personnel overseas at risk of death and damaged relations with allies, and that the way the country collects such materials is a major violation of the law. He said there is a possibility that he may have revealed something.
“The government has leaked information that the government has determined is likely to cause significant harm to the United States,” he said at a press conference.
He said the leaked documents also included information on troop movements.
According to court documents, Teixeira transcribed the confidential documents and shared them on Discord, a social media platform primarily used by online gamers. Prosecutors allege he began sharing documents around 2022, in part to impress his peers on the platform.
Prosecutors say the documents he allegedly leaked include information about providing equipment to Ukraine, and other documents include discussions of plans by foreign adversaries to target U.S. forces overseas. It is said that
Teixeira joined the Air National Guard in 2019 and was an Airman 1st Class. He was based at Otis Air National Guard Base in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where he was assigned to the 102nd Intelligence Wing as a Cyber Transportation Systems Officer.
According to the indictment, he had access to the documents because he had been in possession of top secret classified information since approximately July 2021 and had received training on the definition of classified information, the level of sensitivity, and the appropriate handling of the material.
Although the documents were discovered online in March 2023, Teixeira had been sharing them online for more than a year, prosecutors said.
Levy said the ruling could serve as a warning to anyone considering such a breach. “The judge recognized the seriousness of this conduct and the lasting damage caused.”
Although the sentencing ended a chapter in the case, the fallout the defendant caused will continue to reverberate, Levy argued.
“We won’t know the full extent of the damage done to Jack Teixeira until several years later,” he says.
