Each article I shared below contains different information regarding this matter. (emphasis mine)
Fox News
written by Brian Flood
Wednesday February 1, 2023
Former ABC News investigative journalist James Gordon Meek was arrested Tuesday on criminal charges related to alleged transportation of images of child sex abuse, according to the Department of Justice.
Meek is charged with transportation of child pornography and faces a mandatory minimum of five years in prison and a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison if convicted. Meek allegedly "engaged in sexually explicit conversations where the participants expressed enthusiasm for the sexual abuse of children" and had devices containing such images.
Meek abruptly resigned from the Disney-owned network following an FBI raid of his Arlington, Virginia, home last year. The sudden resignation of Meek, who regularly worked on sensitive stories while working as a national-security investigative producer for ABC News, baffled media insiders who thought the raid could have been tied to his work.
The Justice Department issued a press release Wednesday that finally shed light on the mysterious raid of the journalist's home. The DOJ announced an investigation into Meek initiated from a lead sent by Dropbox, which was eventually 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," the Justice Department announced.
"According to court documents, several of Meek’s devices allegedly contained images depicting children engaged in sexually explicit conduct, and multiple chat conversations with users engaged in sexually explicit conversations where the participants expressed enthusiasm for the sexual abuse of children. In two of those conversations, a username allegedly associated with Meek received and distributed child sexual abuse materials through an internet-based messaging platform," the DOJ continued.
The 15-page affidavit includes extremely disturbing details, including a video found on Meek's phone of the alleged rape of an infant.
ABC News declined comment when reached by Fox News Digital.
Meek has not tweeted since April 27, the day the raid occurred.
The case against Meek was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the DOJ to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse, the department announced.
Meek’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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The Daily Beast
written by Corbin Bolies
Wednesday February 1, 2023
Former ABC News producer James Gordon Meek was arrested late Tuesday on child porn charges, the Department of Justice announced on Wednesday.
The former producer, who resigned from ABC in April 2022, the day after an FBI raid on his home, was charged with one count of transporting images of child pornography, carrying a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison.
Despite an initial report by Rolling Stone suggesting Meek was raided by the feds over his journalistic work, Confider reported in October that there was far more to the story. The FBI raid was not at all about Meek’s reporting work, the DOJ subtly suggested in a statement at the time.
In a 15-page affidavit supporting the charges this week, a federal agent detailed two years’ worth of communications between Meek and other people on the messaging app Kik. The usernames, which the department withheld, and discussed with Meek their shared, extremely graphic fantasies involving child sexual abuse and exchanged images and videos of such abuses, according to the agent. The conversations were sent in February 2022 and were found on an iPhone at Meek’s home during the raid.
FBI agents then linked the SIM card of the iPhone in the exchanges to a number associated with Meek, who traveled between North and South Carolina and Virginia. The agents also found IP addresses linked to the Kik account in those vicinities, according to the affidavit.
During the raid, FBI agents also found a laptop, iPhones, and a hard drive with various forms of child porn on them. The hard drive also contained iPhone screenshots of a Telegram group chat that seemed to center around child sexual abuse, according to the agent.
One screenshot, from April 2020, showed that the iPhone’s owner sent a video that depicted a young girl about to perform oral sex on an older man, which was received and read by some in the group. A November 2022 search warrant of Meek’s iCloud account unveiled the same screenshot, the agent wrote.
Investigators also found evidence that Meek used Snapchat and Instagram to communicate with minors, including sending photos of his penis and naked body. On Instagram, Meek allegedly impersonated a minor girl to chat with other minors.
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The Daily Caller
written by Trevor Schakohl
Wednesday February 1, 2023
Authorities arrested former ABC News national security investigative producer James Gordon Meek Tuesday night for alleged child pornography transportation, the Justice Department (DOJ) announced.
Meek resigned and was not seen publicly for months following an FBI raid at his home last year, according to media reports. The raid uncovered multiple devices containing alleged evidence of child sexual abuse image transportation, and a username allegedly linked with Meek received and distributed child sexual abuse materials in online chat conversations, with conversation participants expressing enthusiasm for child sexual abuse, based on the DOJ’s press release.
“According to court documents, several of Meek’s devices allegedly contained images depicting children engaged in sexually explicit conduct, and multiple chat conversations with users engaged in sexually explicit conversations where the participants expressed enthusiasm for the sexual abuse of children. In two of those conversations, a username allegedly associated with Meek received and distributed child sexual abuse materials through an internet-based messaging platform,” the DOJ said in a press release.
Meek will be sentenced to 5 to 20 years in prison if convicted of transportation of child pornography, the DOJ said. His most recent tweet simply stated, “Facts,” responding to former FBI agent Marc Polymeropoulos, claimed that the Ukrainian military was performing well against Russian forces with U.S. help after the U.S. studied Russian tactics during eight years of conflict in eastern Ukraine.
Meek’s attorney, Eugene Gorokhov, had denied that Meek possessed classified material, Rolling Stone reported.
🚨👇 THIS IS CRAZY 👇🚨
The judge is praising him and the former FBI General is putting in
a good word for this disgusting man. (emphasis mine)
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