Man leaked classified Pentagon docs via Discord — now he’s sentenced to 15 years in prison

That's extremely against the law.
 By 
Alex Perry
 on 
Discord logo
Whoops. Credit: Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV / AFP) (Photo by KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP via Getty Images

A former Air National Guard member will serve prison time because of his activities in a gaming-focused chat app.

Jack Teixeira, who previously served in the Massachusetts Air National Guard, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for pilfering classified documents from the Department of Defense and sharing them to a Discord server, per NBC News.

The sentence was slightly less than the roughly 17 years the U.S. attorney's office wanted, but the judge noted that Teixeira had specifically been trained in the proper handling of secret documents, so he still got 15 years.


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The length of the sentence also has to do with Teixeira pleading guilty to six charges of willfully disseminating national defense information under the Espionage Act. The leaks, which were shared on Discord over the course of about a year between 2022 and 2023, allegedly included information about providing aid to Ukraine, among other things.

No matter how wild and weird your friend group's Discord server is, it probably will never live up to that.

journalist alex perry looking at a smartphone
Alex Perry
Tech Reporter

Alex Perry is a tech reporter at Mashable who primarily covers video games and consumer tech. Alex has spent most of the last decade reviewing games, smartphones, headphones, and laptops, and he doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon. He is also a Pisces, a cat lover, and a Kansas City sports fan. Alex can be found on Bluesky at yelix.bsky.social.

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