Jack Teixeira, a former member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, received a 15-year prison sentence on Tuesday for leaking classified Pentagon documents on social media platform Discord, NBC News reported.
The sentencing, handed down by Judge Indira Talwani in Massachusetts' U.S. District Court, follows Teixeira's guilty plea in March to six counts of violating the Espionage Act through the willful retention and transmission of national defense information.
As a cyber transport systems journeyman at Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod, Teixeira held a top-secret security clearance that gave him access to sensitive materials. Despite his security training, he began sharing transcribed classified documents online around 2022.
The leaked information included sensitive details about Ukraine military aid and intelligence about foreign threats to US forces overseas.
One of the leaked top-secret documents contained a short paragraph about Israel and alleged involvement by Mossad officials in the protests against the government’s judicial overhaul.
The FBI arrested Teixeira in North Dighton, Massachusetts, in April 2023 after investigators discovered he had been distributing classified materials on Discord since January of that year. He has remained in federal custody since mid-May 2023.
The leak of documents by Teixeira, posted largely on social media sites, was believed to be the most serious security breach since more than 700,000 documents, videos and diplomatic cables appeared on the WikiLeaks website in 2010.