Jack Teixeira, a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, was sentenced in federal court in Boston to 15 years in federal prison for leaking classified military documents on Discord. .
Teixeira appeared in court this morning and asked the judge for leniency. He also released a statement apologizing “for all the hurt I’ve caused to my friends, family and those abroad.”
Defense attorney Michael Bachrach also argued that Teixeira was bullied in high school and in the military. Judge Indira Talwani didn’t buy the defense’s claims of abuse, saying she had already disciplined 15 other members of the Air Force associated with Teixeira for not doing more “to prevent him from doing it.”
Teixeira shared secret military documents from late 2022 on a Discord server dedicated to the pixelated sandbox game. Minecraft. The leaked information includes information about the movement of Ukrainian and Russian troops and military equipment used in the war in Ukraine, and Russia’s attempts to obtain more weapons from Egypt and Turkey. The documents eventually found their way to other Discord servers, as well as 4chan and Telegram.
FBI officials arrested Teixeira at his home in April last year. Teixeira initially agreed That includes pleading guilty to 16 years in prison with federal prosecutors in March for knowingly retaining and transmitting national defense information and violating the Espionage Act. If he sticks to his guilty plea and receives a guilty verdict, Teixeira faced an additional 60 years in prison.
