Accused Pentagon leaker Jack Teixeira plans to plead guilty

Accused Pentagon leaker Jack Teixeira will likely change his plea to guilty, according to a court motion filed this week.

Teixeira’s attorneys filed a document in court Thursday in the District Court of Massachusetts indicating a change in plea hearing but did not offer any additional comments. The hearing is necessary to ensure a defendant has not changed their plea because of force. Teixeira previously pleaded not guilty.

Teixeira was indicted last year on six charges of willful retention and transmission of national security information and has been held in jail while he awaits a trial.

The 21-year-old had held a low-ranking job as a technology support staffer but maintained access to classified material from his post at Otis Air National Guard Base in Cape Cod, Mass., where he served with the Massachusetts Air National Guard.

Teixeira chatted frequently with online friends on the social platform Discord, where he began leaking information through handwritten transcriptions of classified material.

He eventually took pictures of the material and posted them on Discord, where they spilled out into the wider online community in early 2023, prompting his April arrest.

The documents detailed everything from U.S. material on the Russia-Ukraine war to Washington’s assessment of allies in an ultimately embarrassing debacle for the Biden administration.

Teixeira had previously been admonished for his behavior around classified material, and in December the Air Force punished 15 people following an investigation that found a failure to report the concerns and a lack of supervision.