Pentagon leaker Jack Teixeira speaks out from prison for 1st time: Exclusive

In an exclusive interview from federal prison, where he is currently serving a 15-year sentence for what prosecutors called one of the most significant leaks of U.S. national defense secrets, Jack Teixeira spoke out for the first time since his arrest more than two years ago -- telling ABC News he doesn't feel he betrayed his country and would commit the same acts again if he had the chance to do things over.

The 23-year-old said he is also appealing to President Donald Trump for a pardon in what he called a "politicized" case under the Biden administration.

"My intent was to educate the United States populist people about what was going on. It was not to harm the United States or the country because I love my nation. I'm a patriot," Teixeira told ABC News over the phone from a medium security federal correctional institution in Virginia. "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."

Watch "Good Morning America" at 7 a.m. ET for more from the interview with Jack Teixeira and his mother, Dawn Dufault.

He said he believes that mission was accomplished "to a significant degree."

"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."

Prosecutors say that while serving as a Massachusetts Air National Guardsman, Teixeira abused his top-secret clearance and accessed and posted images of hundreds of classified documents, including ones related to troop movements in Ukraine and details of the Chinese spy balloons, on the gaming platform Discord. Another document shared included "discussing a plot by a foreign adversary to target United States forces abroad," according to the indictment.

The FBI said his actions created "exceptionally grave and long-lasting damage to the national security of the United States," while then-Attorney General Merrick Garland said Teixeira "endangered our country's national security and that of our allies" when he repeatedly shared classified national defense information online "in an attempt to impress anonymous friends on the internet."

Teixeira pleaded guilty last year to six federal counts of willfully retaining and transmitting national defense information. In exchange, prosecutors agreed not to charge him with additional counts under the Espionage Act.

He also pleaded guilty to a military charge of obstructing justice during a military court-martial this year, avoiding any additional confinement and receiving a dishonorable discharge as part of his plea agreement.

Following the sentencing in the federal case, Joshua Levy, then-acting U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts, said Teixeira "abused his position of trust" and put himself above his country when he exploited his top-secret clearance and "made the deliberate choice" for over a year to access hundreds of classified documents and share them on Discord. This "significant sentence sends a powerful message to every individual who holds a top-secret clearance," Levy said.

Then-FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement that the sentence is a "stark warning to all those entrusted with protecting national defense information: betray that trust, and you will be held accountable."

'I still believe in my actions'

As he serves his federal sentence, Teixeira maintains no one was harmed by his actions. He said his apology in a statement during his sentencing in federal court was meant for his family and friends and how this has impacted them.

"I still believe in my actions," he said.

Teixeira said he believes his case was politicized and that he doesn't deserve 15 years behind bars.

"I just feel like there are people who have done far worse things as far as what they did with similar information, and they didn't get as bad of a treatment as I did," he said. "But my case was specifically politicized by the Biden administration."

"I think that I was used as a sacrificial lamb, and I was crucified to be made of as an example," he continued.

While serving as an information technology specialist, Teixeira used a secure workstation at his Massachusetts base to conduct hundreds of searches for classified documents related to national defense information that were unrelated to his duties, prosecutors said.

Asked why he disregarded his training and leaked classified information, Teixeira said, "I believe that a lot of people and a lot of different people would determine what secrets should be kept, and I'm not entirely sure how fair that was. Because at least from what I had witnessed and what I have exposed, a lot of these things should have been shown to the American people and not kept secret from them. So I had a little bit of a disagreement with some of those policies, I guess you could say."

Despite warnings from his superiors to stop conducting "deep dives" into classified intelligence information, he "purposefully and repeatedly removed classified information and documents containing NDI without authorization," prosecutors said.

Pressed on why he continued to access information outside the scope of his duties despite being told to stop, Teixeira claimed he was encouraged to do the "exact opposite to those directives" and to "do our due diligence and look at what we're supporting and why we're support it and what's going on."

"I felt like at the time when I was being admonished for following a directive that I was given by a superior, so it was just a clash of things that I believed was contradictory," he said.

Teixeira didn't go into specifics, but said he believed there were "lies" being propagated about what was going on concerning the "tactical and strategic aspect" of the Russia-Ukraine war and the U.S. assistance to 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, and essentially just, I wanted people to know exactly what was going on so that no one could say, 'Well, it was like this because the history book or the history textbook said it was,''' he said. "I just wanted to show an unvarnished take on everything that was going on."

Despite the 15-year sentence, he said he wouldn't change what he did.

"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."

Teixeira said his lawyers are working on trying to get a pardon petition through to Trump, and that he believes he will be pardoned.

"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. And I just, I believe that indeed he will," he said.

An attorney for Teixeira filed an application for a pardon on Wednesday. Such a request is typically submitted after a federal sentence has been completed, though his application notes that he is seeking a full pardon rather than only a commutation of his sentence. Ultimately, it will be up to the Trump administration to approve or deny his petition.

Teixeira appealed to Trump to "please give me back to my family, to reunite with my family with my rights as an American and with my freedom."

Teixeira's mother speaks out for 1st time, too

Teixeira's mother, Dawn Dufault, also appealed to Trump in her first interview since her son's arrest in April 2023, saying she thought his prosecution was "malicious" and the case "sensationalized."

"He didn't do it to harm the country," Dufault told ABC News in an exclusive interview in Boston. "They told the public that they were going to make an example out of Jack."

She said she wants Trump to look into the case and "look at how my son was treated."

"If he agrees that it was unfair treatment, give him a pardon," she said.

Dufault reflected on her son's arrest, saying, "It was a complete surprise to me."

"That morning, the New York Times reporters came down my driveway asking to see him. That was the first inkling I had that anything was awry," she said. "We had been watching on the news, the stories, they were trying to find this person leaking documents. No idea. And that was April 13, that this all kind of kicked off. At that time, they had asked, they said that they were going to run an article naming him as the leaker. I still didn't believe it. It was unbelievable to me."

Dufault said she still has questions about why her son did what he did, but she doesn't believe him to be a threat.

She said she believed her son was "compelled to tell the truth" and made the choice to share the classified documents with friends on Discord. She added that Teixeira was also recently diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum, and has obsessive-compulsive disorder, which she said she thinks may also have been a factor in his actions.

"I think that that also played into his compulsion to go against his oath that he took to the government," she said. "I feel like part of it was possibly uncontrollable because of what we now know is autism."

Dufault said Teixeira comes from a military family, and they are concerned about national security in the wake of the leak.

"How has it improved? Could this happen again? Is anybody looking at that? Does anybody care? It was focused heavily on Jack's character versus what actually happened, how it happened, and what could be done to improve the security of our national secrets," she said. "We love this country. We love the government. We're not conspiracy theorists. But I feel like more needs to be done to look into what happened."

An Air Force Inspector General investigation found that individuals in Teixeira's unit "failed to take proper action after becoming aware of his intelligence-seeking activities" but that there was no evidence that members of his supervisory chain were aware of the unauthorized disclosures. Fifteen individuals received disciplinary and other administrative actions for "dereliction in the performance of duties," and the Department of the Air Force said it implemented several reforms to improve the protection of classified and sensitive information.

Dufault described her son as a "good kid" who has changed since his arrest, becoming more self-aware and appreciative of his family.

"I think he needs a second chance," she said. "I think he's still destined for something great. I always have, and I still feel that way."