Feds hit former ABC News producer with child porn charges, disturbing details revealed in court docs



A former ABC News producer was hit with child porn charges. Federal prosecutors accuse James Gordon Meek of engaging in sexually graphic conversations about raping toddlers, sharing sexual videos and images of children as young as babies, and attempting to pressure minors into sending him explicit photos.

Meek, 53, was arrested on Tuesday and charged with transportation of child pornography. Meek received and shared images of child sexual abuse dating back to 2014, according to prosecutors.

A tip was sent to the FBI Washington Field Office's Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force by Dropbox, according to court documents. The cloud storage company reportedly informed authorities about five videos of child sexual exploitation on a Dropbox account.

On April 27, 2022, federal agents raided Meek's home in Arlington, Virginia. Meek abruptly resigned from ABC News on the same day as the raid.

A trove of child porn videos and images were discovered on Meek's iPhone, an external hard drive, and a laptop, according to the complaint.

"According to court documents, several of Meek’s devices allegedly contained images depicting children engaged in sexually explicit conduct, and multiple chat conversations with users engaged in sexually explicit conversations where the participants expressed enthusiasm for the sexual abuse of children," the Department of Defense said in a statement.

The disturbing affidavit reads, "The iPhone 8 contained three chat conversations in which the username 'Pawny4' was engaging in sexually explicit conversations where the participants expressed enthusiasm for the sexual abuse of children. In two of those conversations, Pawny4 received and distributed child pornography image and video files through Kik, an internet-based messaging platform."

According to the affidavit, the Pawny4 account asked a 25-year-old male: "Have you ever raped a toddler girl? It’s amazing."

Prosecutors claim Meek had a Snapchat account that was used to communicate with underage girls. Meek attempted to pressure young girls into sending him sexually explicit photos, according to the affidavit.

Federal agents interviewed a minor who was approached by Meek on Snapchat. The girl "confirmed that Meek and other men had approached her through Snapchat and had pressured her to provide pictures depicting sexually explicit conduct."

Meek sent photos of his penis to minors, according to the complaint.

Meek had worked for ABC News since 2013. Meek won an Emmy Award and was nominated three other times. He was a senior counterterrorism advisor and investigator for the House Committee on Homeland Security.

A spokesperson for ABC News declined to comment on the accusations about the former employee.

Meek faces a mandatory minimum of five years in prison and a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

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Glenn: 'DISAPPEARED' reporter is the year's BIGGEST STORY

Glenn: 'DISAPPEARED' reporter is the year's BIGGEST STORY

Investigative journalist — who was writing a critical book on Biden admin — mysteriously VANISHES



On "The News & Why It Matters," BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales and guests Jason Buttrill and Matt Kibbe discuss a bombshell report about ABC News producer and Emmy Award-winning investigative journalist James Gordon Meek, who has not been seen in public since the FBI raided his Washington, D.C., home in April.

According to reports, heavily armed federal agents seized classified information from Meek's laptop during a raid on his Virginia home on April 27. Colleagues at ABC News told "Rolling Stone" that Meek "fell off the face of the Earth” following the raid.

“He resigned very abruptly and hasn’t worked for us for months," said another colleague.

Neighbors reported that they have not seen Meek since the raid and that his home appears to be vacant.

Meek won several awards for his investigative work on extremely sensitive topics, including exposing a U.S. military cover-up of the deaths of four American Green Berets in Niger, which he made into the acclaimed Hulu documentary "3212 Un-Redacted."

Meek's attorney told Rolling Stone that Meek was "unaware of what allegations anonymous sources are making about his possession of classified documents. If such documents exist as claimed, this would be within the scope of his long career as an investigative journalist covering government wrongdoing."

Meek was working on a book that was critical of the Biden administration's withdrawal from Afghanistan.

"I just find it really strange that [Meek] was criticizing the Biden administration and the FBI raided his home, and now nobody has seen him," Sara commented.

"Yeah, this sounds almost to the letter like exactly what happened under Obama during the James Rosen affair. There were multiple AP reporters, same thing," Jason added.

Watch the video clip below to catch the conversation or find full episodes of "The News & Why It Matters" here. Can't watch? Download the podcast here.


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Journalist 'covering government wrongdoing' has not been seen publicly since FBI raided his home 6 months ago



On April 27 of this year, the FBI reportedly conducted a flash raid on an apartment that investigative journalist and producer James Gordon Meek had rented for 10 years. The raid lasted approximately 10 minutes, and Meek has not been seen publicly since.

After that morning, Meek, 52, apparently vacated the apartment, resigned from his job at ABC, and withdrew from a book project about the withdrawal from Afghanistan, a project which he had previously promoted on social media, according to Rolling Stone, which first broke this story.

"They didn’t stick around," Meek's neighbor John Antonelli recalled about the federal agents that day. "They took off pretty quickly and headed west on Columbia Pike towards Fairfax County."

An unnamed gas station attendant who works across the street from Meek's apartment building likewise recalled the April raid: "I remember coming to work that morning and seeing a lot of police cars out there. Nobody said anything. I didn’t know what was going on."

Though a search warrant for the raid has not been released, a magistrate from the Eastern District Court of Virginia reportedly signed it the night before. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco also likely authorized the raid, Rolling Stone claimed, since Attorney General Merrick Garland established a new policy requiring the deputy AG to sign off on any seizure of materials belonging to a journalist.

The FBI has not exactly confirmed the raid on Meek. However, it did state that agents had conducted "court-authorized law-enforcement activity" somewhere on the block where Meek's apartment is located and on the day in question. It declined to comment further, citing "an ongoing investigation."

The exact nature of the investigation remains a mystery. Rolling Stone reported that "sources familiar with the matter" claimed that agents had discovered classified material on Meek's laptop.

Meek's attorney Eugene Gorokhov responded to the allegations in a written statement:

"Mr. Meek is unaware of what allegations anonymous sources are making about his possession of classified documents," Gorokhov wrote. "If such documents exist, as claimed, this would be within the scope of his long career as an investigative journalist covering government wrongdoing.

"The allegations in your inquiry are troubling for a different reason: they appear to come from a source inside the government," the statement continued. "It is highly inappropriate, and illegal, for individuals in the government to leak information about an ongoing investigation."

Meeks has not been charged with any crime.

ABC News claimed that after April 27, Meek "resigned very abruptly" from the position he had held for nine years. His social media accounts have not been active since that morning. Neither his former colleagues nor his neighbors have heard from him since the raid, and his family has not responded to requests for comment.

Meeks spent most of his career covering issues related to national security and terrorism. He notably exposed a possible Pentagon cover-up regarding the deaths of four Green Berets in Niger in 2017 and produced a Hulu documentary entitled "3212 Un-Redacted" about the topic. The documentary was released to great fanfare late last year, and many speculated that it would earn an Emmy. However, promotion of the documentary stalled after Meek disappeared, and "3212" eventually failed to earn a nomination.

Brian Epstein, who directed and co-produced "3212," also suddenly dropped out of its promotions, though Rolling Stone has had contact with Epstein.

Meek also abandoned "Operation Pineapple Express: The Incredible Story of a Group of Americans Who Undertook One Last Mission and Honored a Promise in Afghanistan," a book he had been writing along with Lt. Col. Scott Mann, a retired Green Beret. After the raid, Meek dropped out of the project, and Simon & Schuster erased his name from the book and all its promotional materials. It was released in August with Mann listed as its sole author.

"[Meek] contacted me in the spring, and was really distraught, and told me that he had some serious personal issues going on and that he needed to withdraw from the project," Mann said. "As a guy who’s a combat veteran who has seen that kind of strain — I don’t know what it was — I honored it. And he went on his way, and I continued on the project."

This is the last tweet posted from Meek's account:

\u201cFacts:\u201d
— James Gordon Meek (@James Gordon Meek) 1651049971