Jack Teixeira, a former member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Tuesday for illegally obtaining classified materials from the Pentagon and distributing them online, as confirmed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Massachusetts.
The sentence was handed down by Judge Indira Talwani in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
Earlier this year, in March, Teixeira pleaded guilty to six charges related to the unauthorized retention and transmission of national defense information under the Espionage Act. His arrest took place in North Dighton, Massachusetts, in April 2023, and he has been in federal detention since mid-May 2023.
Court filings reveal that Teixeira copied confidential documents and distributed them via Discord, an online platform popular with gamers. His document-sharing activities reportedly began around 2022.
One of the documents he is accused of leaking included sensitive details regarding the provision of military aid to Ukraine, while another covered a foreign nation’s plans to target U.S. forces stationed overseas, according to prosecutors.
Teixeira joined the Air National Guard in 2019 and attained the rank of airman first class. He was stationed at Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod, where his role involved working as a cyber transport systems journeyman.
He was able to access the classified materials because he had been granted a top-secret security clearance around July 2021 and had received specific training on classified information, including its various levels and the correct procedures for handling it, as indicated in the indictment.
Although the documents surfaced online in March 2023, prosecutors state that Teixeira had been sharing the classified content since January of that same year.
{Matzav.com}