Pentagon chief Jack Teixeira sentenced to 15 years in prison for sharing military secrets online

Former Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira was sentenced Tuesday to 15 years in prison for stealing classified Defense Department information and sharing it online, the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts announced.

Attorneys for Teixeira did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Teixeira apologized, according to the coverage of the hearing in US District Court by NBC affiliate WJAR of Providence, Rhode Island.

“All the responsibility falls on my shoulders,” Teixeira said. “And I accept what it may bring.”

The U.S. attorney’s office argued for a sentence of 200 months, or about 17 years, the maximum under a plea deal between Teixeira and federal prosecutors.

Judge Indira Talwani noted that the document leak occurred after extensive training covering the consequences of leaks and after Teixeira was warned about the way he handled classified material, according to WJAR.

“Despite that, you put hundreds of documents on the Internet over the course of a year,” she said.

Teixeira’s lawyers argued for a sentence at the low end of the range, noting that the maximum 200 months would be more than the government was seeking against Julian Assange, who is accused of publishing a trove of classified documents.

They argued that Teixeira’s autism and isolation during the pandemic contributed to his behavior.

In March, Teixeira pleaded guilty to six counts of willfully withholding and transmitting national defense information under the Espionage Act. The plea was part of the deal, which included a recommended sentence of 11 to 17 years. He was arrested by the FBI in North Dighton, Massachusetts, in April 2023 and has been in federal custody since mid-May 2023.

After the sentencing Tuesday, Jodi 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.”

Cohen said at a news conference after the sentencing that Teixeira put classified information online almost every day for more than a year. “He transferred it to our adversaries and our allies around the world,” she said.

Acting U.S. Attorney Joshua S. Levy said Teixeira’s crimes put U.S. personnel overseas in mortal danger and damaged relations with allies and may have exposed some of the ways the country collects such material.

“He leaked information that the government judged was likely to cause serious harm to the United States,” he said at the news conference.

Among the disclosed documents was information on troop movements, he said.

According to court documents, Teixeira transcribed classified documents, which he then shared on Discord, a social media platform mostly used by online gamers. He began sharing the documents in or around 2022, in part to impress peers on the platform, prosecutors alleged.

One document he was accused of leaking contained information about supplying equipment to Ukraine, while another contained discussions about a foreign adversary’s plan to target American forces overseas, prosecutors said.

Teixeira entered the Air National Guard in 2019 and was an airman first class. He was based at Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where he was assigned to the 102nd Intelligence Wing as a journeyman in cyber transportation systems.

He was able to access the documents because he had a top-secret security clearance since about July 2021 and had received training on the definition of classified information, classification levels and proper handling of the material, according to the indictment.

While 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 leak. “The judge recognized the seriousness of this conduct and the ongoing nature of the damage,” he said.

While the sentencing closed a chapter of the case, Levy argued that the wreckage caused by the defendant will continue to reverberate.

“We won’t know the full extent of Jack Teixeira’s injury for several years,” he said.