January 1, Former ABC News Journalist Arrested in Child Exploitation Case

Former ABC News investigative journalist James Gordon Meek was arrested on charges related to his alleged transportation of child pornography, the Department of Justice announced.

The 53-year-old Arlington, Virginia, resident was arrested on Tuesday night. If convicted, Meek faces a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison and a maximum of 20 years, authorities said.

Meek, who worked on ABC’s programs Nightline and 20/20, abruptly resigned from the network last April, the same day the FBI raided his home.

Authorities first began investigating the Emmy-nominated journalist in March 2021, after Dropbox sent a tip to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The tip indicated that a user had uploaded videos with its service that “were later confirmed by law enforcement to contain child pornography,” according to a criminal complaint.

The account’s username and IP address led investigators to Meek. The FBI obtained a search warrant and raided Meek’s home on April 27, 2022, “where law enforcement seized multiple devices that allegedly contained evidence of the transportation of images of child sexual abuse,” the DOJ said Wednesday.

“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,” the DOJ said.

The DOJ noted that a username allegedly associated with Meek on an online messaging platform “received and distributed child sexual abuse materials,” according to court documents, with “significant evidence that Meek has engaged directly, and attempted to engage, with minors online on platforms and applications.”

During the search of Meek’s home, law enforcement recovered an external hard drive with “58 images and videos of child pornography” and an iPhone 6 in Meek’s bedroom that contained “approximately 34 images and videos of suspected child pornography,” according to the complaint.

Source: AP | Criminal Complaint | Department of Justice