The Massachusetts Air National Guard tech support member responsible for “one of the most significant leaks of classified documents and information in United States history” will spend a decade and a half behind bars.
U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani sentenced Jack Teixeira to 180 months, which is 15 years, in federal prison at a sentencing hearing in federal court in Boston’s Seaport Tuesday afternoon. She also ordered, among other conditions, that he enter a mental health treatment program and barred him from taking any jobs where he would have access to sensitive government materials. She did not impose a fine because he did not have the resources to pay a fine.
“I wanted to say I’m sorry for all the harm I’ve wrought and I’ve caused,” Teixeira, wearing an orange Plymouth County Correctional Facility jumpsuit, said before Talwani delivered her sentence.
“I can’t really sum up how contrite I am that my behavior has caused such a maelstrom,” the 22-year-old continued, “affecting my family and everyone overseas. I understand that all of the responsibility and consequences come on my shoulders alone and I accept whatever that will bring. I’m at your mercy, your honor.”
Teixeira, of Dighton, was arrested in April 2023 and pleaded guilty in March to six counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information under the Espionage Act.
Teixeira, who served as a Cyber Defense Operations Journeyman at Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod, leaked more than 40 highly classified military documents, including many regarding Russia’s war in Ukraine, to a cadre of fellow video game players on the social media platform Discord.
He was looking at a maximum of more than 16 years for his crimes, if Talwani had followed the plea agreement, which she wasn’t bound by in calculating sentencing. Teixeira entered the plea agreement in late February and finalized with his guilty pleas days later on March 4.
Boston FBI Special Agent in Charge Jodi Cohen called Teixeira “a textbook example of an insider threat.”
“His actions compromised military plans, sources and methods, and allowed our most significant adversaries access to some of our most closely guarded intelligence,” she continued in a press conference following sentencing.
Acting U.S. Attorney Joshua Levy at the same press conference said that the “heavy price” of the sentence “sends a powerful message to every individual who holds a top secret clearance.”
“I expect that starting tomorrow, Jack Teixeira’s name will be mentioned when people are trained about the gravity of a top secret clearance and the consequences if you leak information,” Levy said.
Sentencing arguments
The federal prosecutor, Jared Dolan, in arguing for a sentence of 200 months, called Teixeira’s crimes “exceptionally serious” and compared his actions to those of Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning. He said that the sentence should be large enough to be a huge deterrent to anyone else who is considering such disclosures.
“Our military is built on a backbone of people his age and younger,” Dolan said. “And we trust that the training for those individuals put them in a place to succeed and that’s what they do every single day.”
“The defendants job was to not tell anyone else what he promised to not tell anyone else,” he continued. “Youthful brains make impulsive decisions, but this was not an impulsive decision, and if it was then it was an impulsive decision that he made every day for more than a year.”
Talwani spoke at length about her thought process on sentencing a crime for which there was “very little case law.”
“It seems to me that this is not one harm, this is multiple harms,” Talwani said when arguing that she disagreed with the plea agreement’s argument that the crimes could be grouped. She compared it to rape or robbery, where even if the victim remained the same each new offense was a different crime.
“Yes the victim is the same here, the victim is the United States,” she continued. “But I don’t know how you can say it’s the same if he did it for one month instead of 13 months. … Each time you are creating a new risk, each time is new information, new disclosure.”
In sentencing memos filed last month, the defense recommended a sentence of 11 years while the prosecution recommended a sentence of 16 years and eight months, citing not only the need for Teixeira’s adequate punishment but to deter anyone else from even considering similar actions.
Defense attorney Michael Bachrach argued that Teixeira had no intention whatsoever to harm the United States, and that “motive matters.”
Unlike Manning and Snowden, who each chose to disclose secrets with purpose, Bachrach argued that Teixeira’s “truly bad decision making” was built on both his youth and his autism and wanting to find a community.
“What he cared about was having a community to speak to because he didn’t have that community at Otis Air Base,” Bachrach said, adding that his recommended sentence of 11 years is “significant” and is more time than half of the defendant’s life at the time of the crimes.
Talwani took some exception with Bachrach’s argument but did agree that she was leaning toward a downward departure based on Teixeira’s age.
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