A Massachusetts Air National Guardsman accused of posting dozens of secret intelligence reports and other sensitive documents on a gaming chat group is expected to plead guilty in federal court on Monday, prosecutors said in a court filing on Thursday.
The airman, Jack Teixeira, intends to withdraw his not-guilty plea in a deal that is likely to entail prison time, but less than the 60-year maximum sentence he faced on charges of improperly handling and publicly disclosing national defense secrets, according to two people briefed on the agreement.
Prosecutors often suggest a range of potential punishments to judges, who have the power to impose the sentences they deem appropriate.
Airman Teixeira, 22, who has been in custody since being arrested at his mother’s house in North Dighton, Mass., in the spring, was responsible for one of the most far-reaching leaks of sensitive information in years.
But prosecutors said they found no evidence of espionage, and concluded he 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.
The indictment said Airman Teixeira, who worked at an intelligence unit at an air base on Cape Cod, took the material off computers after conducting unauthorized searches of databases, even after a superior warned him to stop.
