Pentagon leaker Jack Teixeira, speaking from a Virginia federal prison where he is serving a 15-year sentence for leaking national defense secrets, said Thursday that he would commit the same actions again, and that he is appealing for a pardon from President Donald Trump.
"My intent was to educate the United States populist people about what was going on," Teixeira told ABC News. "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."
Teixeira, 22, said that he does not think he betrayed his country, and that he is seeking a pardon in the case because it was "politicized" under former President Joe Biden's administration.
And, he said he's "tortured himself" about what he did, but in the end, "it really doesn't matter.
"I do believe that yes, I would have done it again."
Teixeira said he believes Trump will pardon him. His attorney applied for the pardon on Wednesday.
Normally, such requests are submitted after a federal sentence is completed, but Teixeira's application notes he's seeking a full pardon, not a commutation.
"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," he told ABC News.
Teixeira pleaded guilty during his court-martial in March to military charges of obstructing justice for leaking highly classified documents about the war in Ukraine.
He also pleaded guilty in 2024 to six federal counts of willful retention and transmission of classified information relating to national defense after leaking the classified records to a group of gamers on a messaging app, Discord. He has remained in custody since his arrest in April 2023.
Merrick Garland, the attorney general at the time, said that Teixeira "endangered our country's national security and that of our allies" by sharing the information "in an attempt to impress anonymous friends on the internet."
But Teixeira insists that nobody was harmed by his actions and said that while he apologized during his federal sentencing, that was meant for his family and friends.
He also insisted he does not deserve to remain in prison for 15 years, and said he believes the Biden administration used him as a "sacrificial lamb" who was "crucified to be made of as an example."
Prosecutors in the case said Teixeira used a secure workstation at his base in Massachusetts to search for classified documents that were not related to his duties.
But he told ABC News that he leaked the information because he believes the American people deserved to know what was happening, and that he disagreed with the policies.
The prosecutors also said Teixeira's superiors told him to quit making "deep dives" into intelligence information, but he told ABC he was encouraged to do the "exact opposite of those directives" while conducting "due diligence and look at what we're supporting."
He also insisted he leaked the information because he believed, but said he believed there were "lies" being propagated about U.S. assistance for Ukraine.
"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 ... I just wanted to show an unvarnished take on everything that was going on," Teixeira said.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.