Former ABC News Producer Faces Decades Behind Bars After Child Pornography Guilty Plea – Update
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UPDATE, 1:41 PM: Former ABC News producer James Gordon Meek today pleaded guilty to “transportation and possession of child sexual abuse material,” according to the Department of Justice.
First arrested in late January, the ex-newsman faces a mandatory minimum of no less than five years in prison on the charges with a maximum of 40 years behind bars. Meek will be sentenced on September 29.
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The DOJ was graphic Friday in describing Meek’s vile crime:
According to court documents, while visiting South Carolina in February 2020, James Gordon Meek, 53, of Arlington, Virginia, used an online messaging platform on his iPhone to send and receive images and videos depicting minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct, and to discuss his sexual interest in children. Some of the images and videos depicted prepubescent minors and minors under the age of 12, including an infant being raped. Meek brought the iPhone containing the child sexual abuse material back with him when he returned to Virginia.
With the FBI Washington Field Office’s Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force leading the investigation into Meek’s crimes, Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite, Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Jessica D. Aber for the Eastern District of Virginia, and Assistant Director in Charge David Sundberg of the FBI Washington Field Office took point today in making the ABC News vet’s plea public.
PREVIOUSLY, FEB 1 AM: A former producer for ABC News has been arrested on a charge of transportation of child pornography, nine months after he resigned abruptly at the network amid an FBI search of his home.
James Gordon Meek, 53, was arrested on Tuesday, according to the Justice Department.
Federal prosecutors say that an investigation was started with a lead that was sent by Dropbox to the FBI’s Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force. That led to a search, authorized by a judge, of Meek’s Arlington, VA home where officers “seized multiple devices that allegedly contained evidence of the transportation of images of child sexual abuse,” according to the DOJ.
“The CyberTip reported that a Dropbox account user had uploaded five videos to Dropbox that
were later confirmed by law enforcement to contain child pornography,” according to the complaint. The user name associated with the account was the suspect’s name and the IP address was assigned to him, according to the complaint.
Meek, a military and national security investigative reporter who produced Hulu’s recent 3212 Unredacted. Meek had worked for ABC News since 2013 and previously was a senior investigator for the House Homeland Security Committee.
Meek’s attorney did not immediately return a request for comment.
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