The man who pleaded guilty to leaking top-secret military information online said he would do it all again.
Former Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira, 23, used his high-level security clearance as a cyber transport systems specialist to access classified information, which he then posted online. He pleaded guilty in a plea deal and was sentenced to 15 years in prison in November.
In his first interview from prison, Teixeira told ABC News that he regrets nothing.
“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.”
Beginning as early as February 2022, Teixeira leaked sensitive intelligence on the social media platform Discord about North Korea, Israel, and Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine. Leaked material included assessments of military actions, troop movements, and details of arms shipments—putting fellow soldiers’ lives at risk in addition to jeopardizing strategic planning.
Then-Attorney General Merrick Garland said Teixeira did all of this “in an attempt to impress anonymous friends on the internet.”
Texeira struck a plea deal with federal prosecutors, agreeing to plead guilty to six charges of willful retention and transmission of national defense information. As part of the deal, he wasn’t charged with additional counts under the Espionage Act.
In the interview with ABC, Teixeira said he wants President Donald Trump to pardon him. His lawyers filed an application for a full pardon—not just a commutation of his sentence—on Wednesday.
“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,” he said.
Directly appealing to the president, he said: “Please give me back to my family, to reunite with my family with my rights as an American and with my freedom.”
His mother, Dawn Dufault, echoed his remarks: “If he [Trump] agrees that it was unfair treatment, give him a pardon,” she said.
Calling himself a “patriot,” Teixeira added: “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 said he believes he accomplished his goal.
“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.”
Teixeira added that an apology he made previously was intended for his friends and family, not the nation—because he still doesn’t think he did anything wrong.
“I still believe in my actions,” he said, adding that the Biden administration made him a “sacrificial lamb.”
“I was crucified to be made of as an example,” he said.
Teixeira enlisted in the Air National Guard in 2019 and obtained top secret security clearance two years later, the Justice Department said.
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