Man leaked secret Pentagon documents via Discord – now he has been sentenced to 15 years in prison

A former Air National Guard member will serve a prison sentence for his activities on a gaming-focused chat app.

According to NBC News, Jack Teixeira, who previously served in the Massachusetts Air National Guard, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for stealing confidential Department of Defense documents and leaking them to a Discord server.

The sentence was slightly shorter than the roughly 17 years that the U.S. Attorney's Office was seeking, but the judge noted that Teixeira had received special training in the proper handling of classified documents, so he still faced 15 years.

The length of the sentence also has to do with the fact that Teixeira pleaded guilty to six counts of intentionally disseminating information for national defense under the Espionage Act. The leaks, shared on Discord over the course of about a year between 2022 and 2023, allegedly contained, among other things, information about providing aid to Ukraine.

No matter how wild and weird your friend group's Discord server is, it will probably never live up to it.