Jack Teixeira pleads guilty; Air Force employee charged with sharing info

Massachusetts Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira pleaded guilty on Monday, March 4, to leaking highly classified military documents on social media, accepting a plea deal that could result in a 16-year prison sentence. The 22-year-old pleaded guilty to all six charges under the Espionage Act, with his final sentencing set for September.

According to court documents, Teixeira has consented to participate in a debrief with members of the intelligence community and the Department of Defense and to hand over all pertinent documents he possesses or knows the whereabouts of.

Following Teixeira’s guilty plea, Josh Levy, the US Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, said at a news conference, “Jack Teixeira will never get a sniff of a classified piece of information for the rest of his life.”

In a separate but related case, a U.S. Air Force civilian employee assigned to United States Strategic Command is expected to make a court appearance in Nebraska today after being accused of sharing classified defense information with a woman he met on a foreign dating site. David Slater, a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel, could face up to 30 years in federal prison if convicted on all charges.

STRATCOM, headquartered at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, is the U.S. military combatant command tasked with nuclear deterrence and nuclear command and control. According to filings, while working at STRATCOM, Slater held a Top Secret Security clearance and was trained in the proper handling of sensitive government information.

Both incidents involved the unauthorized release of classified details concerning the ongoing state of the Russia-Ukraine war.