Umair
The Massachusetts Air National Guardsman who pleaded guilty last year to leaking military secrets said on Thursday that he had broken the law to expose Biden administration efforts to aid Ukraine — and appealed to President Trump for leniency, suggesting he had new information to disclose.
The guardsman, Jack Teixeira, who is serving a 15-year sentence in federal prison, made the disclosure after he pleaded guilty during his military court-martial. In a letter he read aloud, he implored Mr. Trump; Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director; and an official who handles pardon requests to intercede on his behalf to prevent a “double-prosecution” that added additional prison time.
The military judge in the case rejected his request, though she agreed to the terms of the plea deal, which calls for a dishonorable discharge and no jail time.
Mr. Teixeira’s plea to Mr. Trump reflected a tactic being employed by an increasing number of convicted criminals and their lawyers as they seize new opportunities for pardons or commutations under a president who has granted reprieves to violent Capitol rioters and other political allies.
He described himself to Mr. Trump as a fellow victim of prosecutorial “weaponization.” In his letter, he cast himself as a heroic patriot, rather than the portrayal of a directionless young man that emerged from court documents in his case. The records illustrated Mr. Teixeira as someone who posted secrets to impress strangers online while living at home with his parents.
“I see dignity and honor in President Trump and his vision for America,” he wrote.
Mr. Teixeira, 23, asked Mr. Trump and Mr. Patel to review his case with “an eye toward reversing deep-state actions and showing the truth no matter how embarrassing to the Biden administration.”
While expressing regret for breaking the law, Mr. Teixeira said he had “knowingly made choices to inform the American public and open their eyes.”
He continued: “I am fully willing to accept the repercussions. I am comfortable with how history will remember me and my actions.”
Mr. Teixeira, who worked as a low-level technician in a secure intelligence unit on an Air Force base in Cape Cod, in Massachusetts, was responsible for one of the most far-reaching leaks of sensitive information in years. As part of his plea deal last year, he agreed to provide federal law enforcement officials with a detailed inventory of secrets he stole, and to help them detect and stop similar breaches in the future.
Mr. Teixeira, who has promoted conspiracy theories about “three-letter agencies,” including the F.B.I., said he feared that the government would try to kill him behind bars and declared he was not suicidal in case he was found dead.
He said he had acted alone and blamed federal law enforcement for causing his family and friends distress during their investigation.
“My actions of disclosing the truth may have also caused my friends and the public who reviewed the materials to be targeted by a then-politicized Department of Justice that had been weaponized against the public and patriots like President Trump specifically,” he wrote.
He added he was not able to disclose everything he knew, including “in-depth reports” on Ukraine and other topics — which he described as “self-serving lies and propaganda.”
Prosecutors said they found no evidence of espionage. Mr. Teixeira, they concluded, had posted secrets to a chat group on the social media platform Discord to impress people he met online with insider information, particularly details of the war in Ukraine.
He took the material off computers after conducting unauthorized searches of databases, even after a superior warned him to stop, according to the original indictment.
Among the secrets disclosed was information on the provision and delivery of military equipment to Ukraine and a highly sensitive report on Russian and Ukrainian troop movements. Officials said the revelations about the troop movements might have compromised how American intelligence gathered the information and from whom.
He also shared a report on the hacking of an unnamed American company’s accounts by “a foreign adversary” and details of an unspecified foreign plot to target U.S. troops abroad that described “where and how” an assault might take place, the indictment said.
A New York Times investigation of more than 9,500 of his messages painted a portrait of a young man who was fixated on weapons, mass shootings and conspiracy theories.
