Jack Teixeira, a US Air National Guardsman who leaked Pentagon documents last year in one of the highest-profile intelligence cases in recent years, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Teixeira, 22, pleaded guilty to the wilful 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. His defence lawyers asked for an 11-year sentence.
In their request for a 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, and that he had suffered from isolation.
Meanwhile, prosecutors argued for a longer prison term, saying that the airman had “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.
