Jack Teixeira did an interview from federal prison with ABC News this week, speaking out for the first time since being sentenced to 15 years for leaking classified U.S. national defense secrets. During the interview, he made it clear that he does not regret what he did and, if given the opportunity, he would not hesitate to do it again. Teixeira, 23, also shared that he has reached out to Donald Trump for a pardon.
Teixeira Says Case Was Politicized
During the interview, he called his case the most “politicized” under the Biden administration. “My intent was to educate the United States populist people about what was going on. It was not to harm the United States or the country because I love my nation. I’m a patriot,” Teixeira told ABC News over the phone from a medium security federal correctional prison in Virginia.
“It was by no means meant to harm my country, but I did believe that I needed to educate the people about what was going on because I believe they were being lied to.” He added, “I don’t feel that I betrayed my country at all, just the opposite,” he said. “I believe that I educated a lot of the people who have been kept in the dark and who were being lied to about this concerning all of the things that had been going on.”
The Guardsman Misused Clearance
According to prosecutors in his case, he was a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard. While serving, Teixeira misused his top-secret clearance and accessed and then publicly posted images of hundreds of classified documents. One of the documents he shared images of was about the movement of troops in Ukraine. Another document was related to a Chinese spy balloon.
Teixeira shared images of these documents on Discord. After his arrest, the FBI called his actions, “exceptionally grave and long-lasting damage to the national security of the United States,” while then-Attorney General Merrick Garland said Teixeira “endangered our country’s national security and that of our allies” when he repeatedly shared classified national defense information online “in an attempt to impress anonymous friends on the internet.”
Teixeira Facing Six Counts
Last year, Teixeira faced six counts of retaining and transmitting classified defense information. He pleaded guilty. He also pleaded guilty to obstructing justice. As part of his plea deal, he was dishonorably discharged.
In Massachusetts, then-acting U.S. attorney said Teixeira “abused his position of trust” and put himself above his country. He added that he “made the deliberate choice” for over a year to access and share classified documents on Discord. This “significant sentence sends a powerful message to every individual who holds a top-secret clearance,” Levy said.
During the interview, Teixeira said, “I still believe in my actions.” He added that his case was politicized and that he did not deserve 15 years in federal prison. “I just feel like there are people who have done far worse things as far as what they did with similar information, and they didn’t get as bad of a treatment as I did,” he said. “But my case was specifically politicized by the Biden administration.”
Sacrificial Lamb
“I think that I was used as a sacrificial lamb, and I was crucified to be made of as an example,” he continued. Teixeira had a secure workstation at the base in Massachusetts where he conducted hundreds of searches for classified documents. Those documents he searched for were unrelated to his duties.
When Teixeira was asked why he leaked classified information, he said, “I believe that a lot of people and a lot of different people would determine what secrets should be kept, and I’m not entirely sure how fair that was.”
He added, “Because at least from what I had witnessed and what I have exposed, a lot of these things should have been shown to the American people and not kept secret from them. So, I had a little bit of a disagreement with some of those policies, I guess you could say.”
Teixeira was warned by his superiors to stop conducting “deep dives” into classified information. Prosecutors say he “purposefully and repeatedly removed classified information and documents containing NDI without authorization.
Due Diligence
When asked why he continued searching for classified documents after several warnings from his superiors, he said that he was encouraged to continue the opposite of those directives and to “do our due diligence and look at what we’re supporting and why we’re support it and what’s going on. I felt like at the time when I was being admonished for following a directive that I was given by a superior, so it was just a clash of things that I believed was contradictory,” he said.
“A lot of the things that the administration at the time was saying was wrong, it was misleading, it was outright false, or it was skewed, and essentially just, I wanted people to know exactly what was going on so that no one could say, ‘Well, it was like this because the history book or the history textbook said it was,”’ he said. “I just wanted to show an unvarnished take on everything that was going on.”
Sentenced To 15 Years
Even though he has been sentenced to 15 years, he still maintains that he would do it all over again. “I’ve tortured myself over and over and over again about what would happen if I didn’t do this, or what would happen if this and that. And in reality, it doesn’t really matter,” he said. “I still do believe that, yes, I would have done it again.”
Hoping For a Trump Pardon
Teixeira’s lawyers are currently trying to get a pardon from Trump. “I think they’ll look at someone like me as a supporter and someone who really used what I thought was going to be my last vote in county jail for Trump during 2024. And I just, I believe that indeed he will,” he said.
