Jack Teixeira, the Massachusetts Air National Guardsman who has already been sentenced to serve more than a decade in prison for leaking hundreds of classified secrets, appeared in front of a court-martial on Monday.
The disgraced member of the U.S. Air National Guard was sentenced to serve 15 years in prison last November after he pleaded guilty to six counts of willful retention and transmission of classified information relating to national defense.
He is appearing in front of a court-martial at Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts on Monday, where he faces additional military charges.
The Air Force and Department of Justice determined in May 2024 that Teixeira had “committed violations of the” Uniform Code of Military Justice, while his attorneys have argued that the court-martial essentially amounts to prosecuting him twice for the same offense.
The military judge took the dispute under advisement and postponed the proceeding until Thursday, according to the Associated Press.
Teixeira enlisted in the U.S. Air National Guard in September 2019 and began leaking classified documents in or around January 2022.
He leaked hundreds of documents via the Discord app for several months before the U.S. military discovered them. At first, he began taking notes on classified intelligence to share with his friends on Discord, an online platform, but he stopped when he got concerned others were on to him. He then decided to print it out, take it home with him, photograph it there, and share those photos online.
The documents he released included classified details about U.S. intelligence on the state of Russia and Ukraine’s war, including expected troop movements. The breach raised questions about the Pentagon’s security clearance processes.
Teixeira, who had a top secret clearance while working in the 102nd Intelligence Wing, was reprimanded twice for the improper handling of classified material in September and October 2022, and then, in January, he was caught viewing “content not related to his primary duty and was related to the intelligence field,” according to federal prosecutors.
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“I wanted to say I’m sorry for all the harm that I brought and caused,” Teixeira said in court before he was sentenced in November. “I understand all the responsibility and consequences fall upon my shoulders alone and accept whatever that will bring.”
He destroyed evidence of his leaks as law enforcement closed in on him.
