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

Former Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira has been sentenced to 15 years for stealing classified information from the Pentagon and sharing it online, the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts announced.

Teixeira appeared before Judge Indira Talwani in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts on Tuesday to receive the sentence.

In March, the national guardsman pleaded guilty to six counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information under the Espionage Act. He was arrested by the FBI in North Dighton, Massachusetts, in April 2023 and has been in federal custody since mid-May.

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

A document he was accused of leaking included information about providing equipment to Ukraine, while another included discussions about a foreign adversary’s plot to target American forces abroad, prosecutors said.

Teixeira entered the Air National Guard in 2019 and held the rank of airman first class. He was based at Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod, where he was assigned as a cyber transport systems journeyman.

He was able to access the documents because he held a top-secret security clearance since around July 2021 and had received training in 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 of 2023, Teixeira had been sharing them online since January of that year, according to prosecutors.