Jack Teixeira, a US Air Nationwide Guardsman, who leaked Pentagon paperwork final 12 months in one of many highest-profile intelligence circumstances lately, was sentenced to fifteen years in jail.
Teixeira, 22, pleaded responsible to the willful retention and transmission of nationwide defence data in March.
Whereas he labored at an Air Nationwide Guard base, Teixeira obtained supplies together with maps, satellite tv for pc pictures and intelligence on US allies, after which posted these paperwork to an internet platform in style with players.
Among the many paperwork he shared was confidential details about the battle in Ukraine.
Prosecutors requested US District Courtroom Choose Indira Talwani to impose a 16 and a half-year sentence on Teixeira, whereas his defence attorneys requested for an 11-year sentence.
Of their request for lenient sentence, Teixeira’s attorneys argued in court docket filings that the airman was the goal of bullying whereas in highschool and his navy unit.
In the meantime, prosecutors have argued for an extended sentence, saying that the airman “perpetrated one of the vital important and consequential violations of the Espionage Act in American historical past.”
“Teixeira understood the danger to his nation and did it anyhow,” prosecutors advised Choose Talwani on Tuesday.
Teixeira started with a small group of gun and navy lovers on a Discord server, or chatroom, in late 2022. Whereas the paperwork stayed in that chatroom initially, the knowledge was later re-shared on extra public channels.
The paperwork have been later picked up by pro-Kremlin Telegram channels and navy bloggers.
Teixeira enlisted within the Massachusetts Air Nationwide Guard, a reserve of the US Air Drive, in 2019. In that function, he had top-secret safety clearance.
To be able to get this clearance, Teixeira signed a “lifetime binding non-disclosure settlement” acknowledging that the “unauthorized disclosure of protected data might lead to felony fees”, in keeping with court docket paperwork.
Teixeira’s leak prompted the Pentagon to look at its programs for dealing with categorised data.
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