(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Jack Teixeira, the former Massachusetts Air National Guard member who caused an international uproar when he leaked highly classified documents about the war in Ukraine, is now incarcerated at the supermax prison in Florence, Colorado—widely considered the harshest detention center in the U.S.
The 24-year-old Teixeira had been held at the “Big Sandy” high-security prison in Kentucky, but is now listed as being held in Florence. It’s not clear when he was transferred. Florence supermax is the home of inmates such as drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, Oklahoma City bombing accomplice Terry Nichols and 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef. Florence is also where Whitmer kidnap defendants Adam Fox and Barry Croft are being caged.
Teixeira’s leaks in 2022, when he was just 21 years old, effectively debunked a longstanding Biden-administration narrative that the U.S.-backed Ukrainian resistance was decimating the Russian army on the battlefield. They included evidence that the Pentagon had soldiers on the ground in Ukraine when Biden administration officials said that there weren’t any, that the U.S. had spied on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and that the war in Ukraine was going worse than officials were saying publicly.
The gamer who leaked Pentagon documents on Discord — by all accounts just to impress his friends — is being held in arguably the harshest prison in the nation: Florence Supermax. https://t.co/kzjho8ktL2 pic.twitter.com/HSu5zi95RM
— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) February 23, 2026
Rather than taking part in a sophisticated foreign intelligence operation or domestic whistleblowing, it turned out that Teixeira was simply trying to build clout with his fellow gamers. The Washington Post reported in April 2023 that Teixeira uploaded the Pentagon documents to a Discord chatroom using an anonymous account called “OG.”
But at his sentencing, which is set to run through 2036, Teixeira did not express remorse.
In a 10-minute address, Teixeira said he was “exposing and correcting the lies that were perpetrated by President Biden and force-fed to the American people” about the war in Ukraine.
“I believe the Department of Justice was politicized against President Trump and myself,” added Teixeira, who said he acted alone. He called on Trump and members of his administration to reverse his convictions.
“If I saved one American, Russian or Ukrainian life in this money-grabbing war, my punishment was worth it,” he said.
Teixeira’s actions prompted enhanced government surveillance of Discord and other gaming platforms.
NBC News reported in April 2023 that the Biden White House was “looking at expanding the universe of online sites that intelligence agencies and law enforcement authorities track.”
“The intelligence community is now grappling with how it can scrub platforms like Discord in search of relevant material to avoid a similar leak in the future,” the outlet added, quoting an unnamed congressional official.
More information on the government’s targeting of gamers came out in February 2024, when the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that the FBI had increased its efforts to infiltrate gaming servers the year prior.
Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
