From the BBC:
“US airman Jack Teixeira
sentenced to 15 years in prison”
Jack Teixeira, a US Air National
Guardsman, who leaked Pentagon documents last year in one of the
highest-profile intelligence cases in recent years, was sentenced to 15 years
in prison. Teixeira, 22, pleaded guilty to the willful retention and
transmission of national defence information in March. While he worked at an
Air National Guard base, Teixeira obtained materials including maps, satellite
images and intelligence on US allies, and then posted those documents to an
online platform popular with gamers. Among the documents he shared was
confidential information about the war in Ukraine.
Prosecutors asked US District
Court Judge Indira Talwani to impose a 16 and a half-year sentence on Teixeira,
while his defence lawyers asked for an 11-year sentence. In their request for
lenient sentence, Teixeira's lawyers argued in court filings that the airman
was the target of bullying while in high school and his military unit. Meanwhile,
prosecutors have argued for a longer sentence, saying that the airman
"perpetrated one of the most significant and consequential violations of
the Espionage Act in American history." "Teixeira understood the risk
to his country and did it anyways," prosecutors told Judge Talwani on
Tuesday. Teixeira began with a small group of gun and military enthusiasts on a
Discord server, or chatroom, in late 2022. While the documents stayed in that
chatroom initially, the information was later re-shared on more public
channels. The documents were later picked up by pro-Kremlin Telegram channels
and military bloggers.
Teixeira enlisted in the
Massachusetts Air National Guard, a reserve of the US Air Force, in 2019. In
that role, he had top-secret security clearance. In order to get this
clearance, Teixeira signed a "lifetime binding non-disclosure
agreement" acknowledging that the "unauthorized disclosure of
protected information could result in criminal charges", according to
court documents. Teixeira's leak prompted the Pentagon to examine its systems
for handling classified information.
^ He should get the Death
Penalty, but at least it was 15 years. ^
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