Emmy-Winning ABC News Producer Resigns, Withdraws From Public After FBI Raid on Home: Report
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ABC News’s James Gordon Meek, an award-winning investigative producer and journalist, reportedly had his home raided by the FBI in late April and has since resigned from his job and withdrawn from the public.
Rolling Stone’s Tatian Siegel reported on Tuesday that “multiple sources familiar with the matter say Meek was the target of an FBI raid,” and moreover he may have run afoul of the Biden administration and the U.S. national security apparatus.
The FBI did not directly confirm the raid on Meek’s residence but told Rolling Stone the bureau did indeed conduct a search that April day “at the 2300 block of Columbia Pike, Arlington, Virginia, conducting court-authorized law-enforcement activity. The FBI cannot comment further due to an ongoing investigation.”
“Sources familiar with the matter say federal agents allegedly found classified information on Meek’s laptop during their raid. One investigative journalist who worked with Meek says it would be highly unusual for a reporter or producer to keep any classified information on a computer,” Siegel reported. Rolling Stone made clear “Meek has been charged with no crime.”
However, the report notes:
But independent observers believe the raid is among the first — and quite possibly, the first — to be carried out on a journalist by the Biden administration. A federal magistrate judge in the Virginia Eastern District Court signed off on the search warrant the day before the raid. If the raid was for Meek’s records, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco would have had to give her blessing; a new policy enacted last year prohibits federal prosecutors from seizing journalists’ documents.
Meek, a former senior counterterrorism advisor and investigator for the House Committee on Homeland Security, has extensively covered the rise of Al Qaeda since 1998 and, according to his ABC News bio, broken “major exclusives such as a plot to bomb New York City tunnels, and he waged a five-year investigation into the fratricide death in Iraq of a G.I. he knew, Pfc. David H. Sharrett II.”
Meek, an Emmy Award-winner, resigned from the network after the raid and has rarely been seen since, Rolling Stone reported.
“He fell off the face of the Earth,” one former colleague told Siegel. “And people asked, but no one knew the answer.” Rolling Stone included a statement from ABC on his departure, which read, “He resigned very abruptly and hasn’t worked for us for months.”
Meek’s lawyer, Eugene Gorokhov, denied any knowledge of alleged classified documents in Meek’s possession, telling Rolling Stone:
Mr. Meek is 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.
The allegations in your inquiry are troubling for a different reason: they appear to come from a source inside the government. It is highly inappropriate, and illegal, for individuals in the government to leak information about an ongoing investigation. We hope that the DOJ [Department of Justice] promptly investigates the source of this leak.
Siegel concluded her report by noting the cause and details surrounding the raid on Meek’s home and his subsequent withdrawal remain largely a mystery:
Now, Meek appears to be on the wrong side of the national-security apparatus. And no one can say for certain if law-enforcement officers actually removed him from the building. And thus, a riddle was born. Documents pertaining to the case remain sealed.
Read the full report here.
