CNN staffer charged with trying to convince moms to allow him to train daughters to be sexually submissive

A Connecticut man was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Friday for allegedly persuading minors to engage in unlawful sexual activity, officials said.

John Griffin, 44, was taken into custody Friday after a federal grand jury in Vermont charged him with three counts of using a facility of interstate commerce to attempt to entice minors to engage in unlawful sexual activity.

Officials said that from April to July of 2020, the Stamford, Conn., resident used the messaging apps Kik and Google Hangouts to communicate with people disguised as parents of young girls to convey to them that women should be sexually subservient and inferior to men, and that a “woman is a woman regardless of her age,” among other ideas.

Griffin was identified by the Stanford Advocate as a “CNN employee” and his LinkedIn page said he worked closely there with the recently fired Chris Cuomo.

“We take the charges against Mr. Griffin incredibly seriously,” a CNN spokesperson told Hearst Connecticut Media on Friday. “We only learned of his arrest this afternoon and have suspended him pending investigation.”

According to the indictment, Griffin’s goal was to persuade parents to allow him to sexually train their daughters, teaching them how to be sexually submissive.

Authorities said that in April of 2020 he proposed to engage in a “virtual training session” over a video chat, in which he instructed a mother and her 14-year-old daughter to remove their clothing and touch each other.

In June, he told a mother of two young girls — ages 9 and 13 — that her responsibility was to see that her eldest daughter “was trained properly.”

He later transferred more than $3,000 to the mother for plane tickets so that she, along with her 9-year-old, could fly from Nevada to Boston. When they did, in July, he picked them up in his Tesla and drove them to his Ludlow ski house.

“At the house, the daughter was directed to engage in, and did engage in, unlawful sexual activity,” authorities said.

According to the indictment, Griffin also proposed to a woman disguised as the mother of a 16-year-old daughter that they should take a “little mother-daughter trip” to the ski house for sexual training involving the child.

In what appears to be Griffin’s LinkedIn, he says that he has worked as a “senior producer” at CNN since 2013, after working at ABC News for nearly eight years. He has also worked as a producer and editor at Fox News and CBS News.

He describes his role at CNN as “lead anchor’s senior producer” at the network’s morning news show “New Day,” where he worked “shoulder-to-shoulder with lead anchor Chris Cuomo.”

Cuomo, who was once one of the network’s top-rated hosts, was recently fired over his alleged efforts to help his brother, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, fight sexual harassment accusations.

If convicted, Griffin faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years of imprisonment on each count, or a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, federal authorities said.

The federal government also intends to seek the forfeiture of Griffin’s Ludlow house, his Tesla, a Mercedes, as well as other property he used to commit the charged offenses, according to the indictment.