Jack Teixeira, a US Air National Guardsman who leaked Pentagon records last year in one of the highest-profile ininestablishigence cases in recent years, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Teixeira, 22, pdirected culpable to the wilful retention and transomition of national defence inestablishation in March.
While he labored at an Air National Guard base, Teixeira acquireed materials including maps, sainestablishite images and ininestablishigence on US allies, and then posted those records to an online platestablish well-understandn with gamers.
Among the records he scatterd was self-promisedial inestablishation about the war in Ukraine.
Prosecutors asked US Didisjoine Court Judge Indira Talwani to impose a 16 and a half-year sentence on Teixeira. His defence lawyers asked for an 11-year sentence.
In their ask for a peromitive sentence, Teixeira’s lawyers argued in court filings that the airman was the aim of tormentoring while in high school and his military unit, and that he had suffered from isolation.
Meanwhile, prosecutors argued for a extfinisheder prison term, saying that the airman had “perpetrated one of the most meaningful and consequential violations of the Espionage Act in American history”.
“Teixeira understood the hazard to his country and did it anyways,” prosecutors tgreater Judge Talwani on Tuesday.
Passing sentence, Judge Talwani said to Teixeira: “You are youthful and you have a future ahead of you, but it is such a grave crime.”
Teixeira apologised before the court, and said he understood that “all the responsibility and consequences descfinish on my shoulders alone”, according to inestablishers inside the Boston court.
Teixeira began with a petite group of firearm and military enthusiasts on a Discord server, or chatroom, in tardy 2022. While the records stayed in that chatroom initipartner, the inestablishation was tardyr re-scatterd on more unveil channels.
The records were tardyr picked up by pro-Kremlin Telegram channels and military bloggers.
Teixeira encataloged in the Massachengagetts Air National Guard, a reserve of the US Air Force, in 2019. In that role, he had top-secret security evidentance.
In order to get this evidentance, Teixeira signed a “lifetime obtaining non-disclocertain consentment” acunderstandledging that the “unapexhibitd disclocertain of protected inestablishation could result in criminal accuses”, according to court records.
Teixeira’s leak prompted the Pentagon to spendigate its systems for handling classified inestablishation.
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