Former ABC News producer & journalist, James Gordon Meek, has pleaded guilty to possession of CSAM

A former ABC News producer & journalist has pleaded guilty to possession of CSAM. 

He used a messaging app to send & receive CSAM videos & pictures of children under 12, including a video of an infant being raped. Former ABC News national security investigative producer James Gordon Meek is pleading guilty to transportation and possession of child pornography. Meek is scheduled to have a sentencing hearing on Sept. 29, where he will face a mandatory minimum of five years and a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison.

Meek was taken into custody in January following an investigation led by the FBI Washington Field Office’s Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force. They were responding to a March 2021 tip from Dropbox to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children which alleged that child pornography had been uploaded to an account with a username and IP addresses associated with Meek on March 10.

The FBI obtained a search warrant for the former national security news producer’s Virginia home before searching it April 27, 2022, and seizing several devices. That included a personal phone and external hard drive, which allegedly contain evidence related to his initial charge.

The feds brought charges against Meek earlier this year, arresting him at his home on February 1, 2023. The arrest took place nine months after the FBI had raided his Arlington, Va., home. The search, which took place on April 27, 2022, was initiated via an investigative lead sent by Dropbox and ultimately received by the FBI Washington Field Office’s Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force.

According to a press release from the DOJ, while visiting South Carolina in February 2020, the ex-ABC Newser “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.” Meek then transported the iPhone containing the illegal material back to his home to Virginia.

Meek’s charges relate to a February 2020 visit to South Carolina where the 53-year-old Arlington resident used an unidentified online messaging platform on his personal iPhone to send and receive both images and videos that depicted minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct in addition to discussing his sexual interest in children. He brought the phone containing this material back with him on his return to Virginia.