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A Massachusetts Air National Guard member accused of posting dozens of classified intelligence reports and other classified documents in a gaming chat group is expected to plead guilty in federal court on Monday, prosecutors said in court Thursday. This was revealed in the submitted documents.
According to the news agency, Airman Jack Teixeira will be acquitted in a deal that will likely result in a prison sentence, but is shorter than the maximum 60 years in prison for improperly handling and publishing national defense secrets. It is said that he intends to withdraw his complaint. The two were briefed on the agreement.
Prosecutors often suggest a range of potential penalties to judges, who have the power to impose sentences they deem appropriate.
Teixeira, a 22-year-old airman who has been in custody since his arrest at his mother’s home in North Dighton, Massachusetts, in the spring, was implicated in one of the most wide-ranging security breaches in years.
But prosecutors said they found no evidence of espionage, saying he posted secrets in chat groups on the social media platform Discord to impress inside information, particularly details of the war in Ukraine, on people he met online. It was concluded that it did.
According to the indictment, Teixeira, an Airman who worked in the intelligence unit at an Air Force base on Cape Cod, conducted unauthorized searches of databases and then removed materials from his computer despite being warned by his superiors not to do so. That’s what it means.
The secrets exposed included information on the provision and delivery of military equipment to Ukraine, as well as highly classified reports on Russian and Ukrainian troop movements. Officials said the revelations about troop movements may have compromised how and from whom U.S. intelligence agencies collect information.
He also published a report on the hacking of anonymous American company accounts by a “foreign adversary,” and a criminal complaint targeting U.S. forces overseas that described “where and how” attacks could be carried out. They shared details of certain foreign projects, the indictment said.
new york times An examination of more than 9,500 of his messages reveals a portrait of a young man obsessed with weapons, mass shootings, and dubious conspiracy theories.
Although he enjoyed the social status and access to information he had gained through his military service and top secret clearance, he developed feelings of contempt for the government. He accused the United States of a number of nefarious activities, including producing biological and chemical weapons in Ukrainian laboratories, creating the Islamic State, and even organizing mass shootings.
In the summer of 2022, after a gunman killed three people at an Indiana shopping mall, Airman Teixeira said, “The FBI and three other agencies are reaching out to mentally ill children and giving them access to firearms.” “We’re trying to convince people to commit mass shootings,” he wrote on Discord, sharing a debunked conspiracy theory.
The judge in the case last year after prosecutors presented evidence that Mr. Teixeira had a history of making violent and racist threats and had access to an armory in April when he argued for indefinite detention. , rejected his request for release.
The government has severely questioned Airman Teixeira’s overall mental state, saying he was suspended from his high school in 2018 for disturbing comments about using Molotov cocktails and other weapons, and that he posted information about the mass shooting online. He revealed that he had been looking for him. His filing says he “regularly discusses violence and murder” on Discord and surrounded his bed at his mother’s home with firearms and tactical equipment.
His lawyers downplayed his statements in court, saying he is a hard-working young military man with no criminal record, no history of mental health problems, and does not pose a danger to the community or national security. He said there was no.
The Justice Department also documented a series of lapses by the aviator’s superiors.
According to lawsuit filings, Air Force officials caught Teixeira taking notes and conducting a detailed search for classified materials months before he was charged with leaking vast amounts of government secrets. was not removed from his job.
After his arrest, several of his superiors were reassigned.
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