National Guardsman Jack Teixeira to plead guilty to leaking classified US military intel
Massachusetts Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira will plead guilty to leaking troves of classified military documents and posting them online in a case considered one of the most serious US national security breaches in recent years.
Federal prosecutors in Boston filed a motion for a Rule 11 hearing on Monday — indicating that Teixera will plead guilty, although it’s not clear to which charges as the agreement has not been publicly filed.
Teixeira, who was 21 at the time of his arrest in April last year, is accused of abusing his security clearance and leaking top-secret Pentagon documents and sharing them on the social media and gaming app Discord. The documents were then widely shared.
The highly classified documents he was accused of disclosing included detailed intelligence assessments of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including “how the equipment would be transferred, and how the equipment would be used upon receipt,” according to the indictment.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said after the indictment that the information “reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to national security if shared.”
He pleaded not guilty to six federal charges in June.
The Post has reached out to the USAO’s National Security Division for comment.
Teixeira enlisted in the US Air National Guard in 2019 and was granted top-secret security clearance in 2021, according to the Justice Department.
He worked as a cyber transport systems journeyman for the 102nd Intelligence Wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard and was stationed at Otis Air National Guard Base in Cape Cod during the timeframe he has been accused of leaking national security secrets.
He allegedly began posting classified documents online in January 2022, the DOJ said.
In December, 15 members of the 102nd Intelligence Wing, including his former unit commander, were disciplined for failing to supervise him and neglecting to inform authorities about his espionage-like behavior.
The leak was considered the most serious breach of national security since 700,000 documents, videos and diplomatic cables were published on WikiLeaks in 2010.