Jack Teixeira was only 21-years-old last year when he was arrested and charged with one of the worst U.S. military leaks in recent history. A former airman with the Massachusetts Air National Guard, Teixeira has been accused by the government of leaking “Top Secret” U.S. intelligence, including classified details about the war in Ukraine. Now, after many months of maintaining his innocence, Teixeira plans to plead guilty to the charges against him, a spokesperson for his family has confirmed.
On Thursday, attorneys for Teixeira filed a motion for a change of plea hearing next Monday, NPR reports. Not long afterward, a Teixeira family spokesperson, Jen Reed, told reporters that the former airman plans to plead guilty at that hearing. Teixeira had previously pled not guilty last summer.
Teixeira is currently charged with a large number of serious crimes, including the illegal retention and transmission of national defense information. The story is this: As part of his duties as a former IT technician at Otis Air National Guard Base, Teixeira was given access to special compartmented information, including information about the war in Ukraine, the location of U.S. spy satellites, and phone intercepts of Russian generals. Teixeira is accused of abusing that access to copy sensitive intel and then share it liberally online.
In terms of intelligence leaks, Teixeira’s case is notable for the apparent lack of an ideological motive. For most leakers, they’re trying to share information with the public that they think is important. In Teixeira’s case, he appears to have not been interested in that. Instead, the narrative around the leaks suggests Teixeira was motivated by a juvenile desire to impress the other members of a Discord group he frequented. “This information I give here is less than half of what’s available,” Teixeira wrote to those members, in one instance. “All of this s*** I’ve told you guys I’m not suppose to.”
For the charges related to the illegal retention of defense information, Teixeira faces decades in prison.
