Former ABC News Producer Arrested, Facing Child Pornography Charges Following FBI Raid

AP Photo/Julio Cortez

Former ABC News producer James Gordon Meek was arrested and is facing child pornography charges, the Department of Justice announced Wednesday.

An April 2022 FBI raid of Meek’s home was first reported on by Rolling Stone in October. That report oddly suggested the raid could have been political retaliation from President Joe Biden’s administration.

According to the DOJ:

According to court documents, the investigation into James Gordon Meek, 53, of Arlington, was initiated from an investigative lead sent by Dropbox and ultimately received by the FBI Washington Field Office’s Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force. That lead ultimately led to a court-authorized search of Meek’s residence in April 2022 by members of the task force, where law enforcement seized multiple devices that allegedly contained evidence of the transportation of images of child sexual abuse.

On top of the material involving children engaged in sexual activity, police also found chat logs where Meek and others “expressed enthusiasm for the sexual abuse of children.” Meek also distributed materials including child sexual abuse to others in multiple online chats.

Following the initial raid, Meek resigned from his position from ABC. Meek is facing a minimum of five years in prison and a maximum sentence of 20 years.

Meek is an award-winning journalist who served as a senior counterterrorism advisor and investigator for the House Committee on Homeland Security.

The original report on the raid of Meek’s home suggested he had “classified materials” on a laptop and cited “independent observers” who believed the raid was going to be the first of many on journalists.