Pentagon leaker Jack Teixeira sentenced to 15 years in prison for violating Espionage Act

Source: CBS News

Updated on: November 12, 2024 / 4:00 PM EST


Boston — Former Massachusetts Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira, who admitted he illegally posted sensitive military information to online chat rooms in what prosecutors called one of the "most prolific" and "rare" government leak operations, was sentenced to 15 years in prison by a Boston federal judge on Tuesday.

Teixeira, a 22-year-old Massachusetts native, pleaded guilty in March to six counts of violating the Espionage Act, acknowledging he was behind the yearlong distribution of dozens of classified government documents — including some marked "top secret" — on Discord, a social media platform. The classified documents involved in the leak touched on a number of sensitive issues, but the most notable were about Russia's war in Ukraine, detailed troop movements and timelines for Western weapons deliveries to the war-torn country, investigators said.

Judge Indira Talwani, who imposed the sentence, formally accepted the plea agreement on Tuesday and told Teixeira, "You posted on the internet on Discord hundreds of documents over a period of a year…I don't find any ambiguity here as to what you were doing being wrong."

Federal law enforcement arrested Teixeira at his family's Massachusetts home after a weekslong probe into how sensitive Pentagon records were ending up online. Prosecutors asked Talwani to sentence the defendant to 200 months in prison — almost 17 years — for his central role in "one of the most significant and consequential violations of the Espionage Act in American history," one that has prompted reforms in the handling of classified information.

Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pentagon-leaker-jack-teixeira-sentencing/