Young airman who shared top secrets on gaming chat faces harsh prison term
Former Air Guard member shared classified war info with online gaming friends through Discord about a year ago. His defense team points to autism while asking for shorter sentence in major espionage case
In a high-stakes court hearing on 11/12/24‚ prosecutors want Jack Teixeira to spend almost 17 years behind bars for sharing top-secret military info online - one of the biggest info leaks in US history
The 22-year old ex-Air Guard member (who worked at an air base in Massachusetts) had special access to classified stuff despite his low rank. Starting in early-22‚ he got into hundreds of secret files about the Ukraine war and other hot-spots around the world; sharing details with his gaming buddies on Discord chat
His actions didnt go unnoticed: bosses warned him twice about how he handled secret info‚ but he kept digging deeper into intelligence reports. Last spring‚ authorities caught up with him - leading to his guilty plea on six counts related to keeping and sharing defense secrets
I wanted to know everything about it because I thought it was probably the biggest event that happened in my generations history
The defense team says Teixeira has autism and never meant to hurt America: theyʼre pushing for an 11-year sentence instead. Besides this case‚ heʼs got military charges coming up next spring - his lawyers are trying to work out a deal for those too
