Photo: STEFANI REYNOLDS / AFP / Getty Images
Massachusetts Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira pleaded guilty on Monday (March 4) to six counts of willfully retaining and disseminating national defense information.
As part of a plea deal with prosecutors, Teixeira agreed to accept a 16-year prison sentence and sit down with members of the intelligence community for a debrief about how he managed to steal and leak classified military documents to a private Discord server.
Teixeira used his security clearance, which he received as a computer network technician at an Air Force base in Cape Cod, to gain access to secure government servers. He then took the documents home and posted them to a private Discord server.
The documents included information about the war between Russia and Ukraine, top-secret information about China and North Korea, and other classified material.
After an investigation into the leak, Air Force officials punished 15 people for failing to discipline Teixeira and report his actions to their superiors. The commander of Teixeira’s unit was relieved of his command.