Jack Teixeira agrees to 16-year plea deal in document leak case
A Massachusetts Air National Guardsman accused of posting classified intelligence reports and sensitive documents online agreed to plead guilty Monday in exchange for a 16-year prison sentence and a commitment to extensively inform officials about the extent of his leaks.
The pilot, Jack Teixeira, withdrew his not guilty plea during an appearance in Boston federal court and pleaded guilty to six charges of “intentionally retaining and transmitting national defense information,” according to court documents filed by the government.
The judge in the case, Indira Talwani, scheduled a hearing for September to determine whether she would sign the deal. It would be highly unusual for a judge to make major changes to a deal that would require approval from top U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials.
The Justice Department agreed not to charge him with violations of the Espionage Act, which, combined with the other charges, could have resulted in a prison sentence of up to 60 years if he had been convicted.
Airman Teixeira, 22, has been in custody since he was arrested last spring at his mother’s home in North Dighton, Massachusetts. He was responsible for one of the most far-reaching leaks of sensitive information in years – a colossal embarrassment that revealed how even a low-ranking soldier could obtain and release defense secrets for months without being stopped.
Prosecutors said they found no evidence of espionage and concluded that airman Teixeira posted secrets in a chat group on the social media platform Discord to impress people he met online with inside information, particularly details about the war in Ukraine.
The indictment alleged that Airman Teixeira, who worked in an intelligence unit at an Air Force base on Cape Cod, removed the material from computers after conducting unauthorized database searches, even after a superior warned him to stop.
Among the secrets revealed were information on the supply and delivery of military equipment to Ukraine and a highly sensitive report on Russian and Ukrainian troop movements. Officials said the revelations about the troop movements may have compromised how U.S. intelligence collected the information and from whom.
He also shared a report on the hacking of an unnamed U.S. company’s accounts by “a foreign adversary” and details of an unspecified foreign plot to attack U.S. forces abroad, detailing “where and how” an attack could occur, the complaint said.
A New York Times Research into more than 9,500 of his posts painted a portrait of a young man fixated on guns, mass shootings and shadowy conspiracy theories.