The initially mysterious case of an ex-ABC News producer raided by the feds has ended.
James Gordon Meek, a former star national security producer, pleaded guilty on Friday to two of the three counts he was charged with during a hearing in his federal child pornography case. Meek agreed to do so on the condition that, if an appeals court ruled in his favor in the future, he would be allowed to withdraw his plea.
Meek was arrested in February on one count of transporting child pornography images, a federal charge with a mandatory five-year prison sentence. He was later formally indicted in March on three counts, including transportation, distribution, and possession of child porn. In his plea agreement on Friday, Meek pleaded guilty to transportation and possession, each carrying a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. The agreement dismisses the distribution count.
ADVERTISEMENT
A lawyer for Meek did not immediately respond to requests for comment. An ABC News spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“We’re extremely grateful for the hard work of our prosecutors and investigative agents in securing the plea agreement accepted by the Court today,” Karoline Foote, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Virginia, wrote in a statement. “The length of the investigation and prosecutorial effort is a testament to the care and diligence the case team took in proving the facts of this case while respecting and preserving the constitutional rights afforded the defendant, as a private citizen and as a journalist.”
The case concludes a saga shrouded in mystery from its onset, one that involved an FBI raid at the journalist’s home the same day he abruptly quit a prominent role at ABC News, ultimately unraveling the legacy of an esteemed national security reporter.
Rolling Stone reported last October that the FBI had raided Meek’s Arlington, Virginia, home in April 2022, though it offered few details on what law enforcement sought to uncover. The news of the raid unleashed a wave of controversy, as it at first appeared as though the Biden administration had raided a journalist doing his job, especially as the sweep targeted an Emmy-winning journalist known for a string of national-security scoops.
Confider reported the following week, however, that the DOJ confirmed the raid had nothing to do with Meek’s reporting, and the ABC journalist (who left the network following the search and pulled out of a book deal) never contacted the company’s lawyers. It was not until February that the Department of Justice fully revealed the true nature of the case: child sex abuse.
In a 15-page affidavit, the FBI laid out how a tip regarding a Dropbox account linked to Meek led to the raid on his home. There, agents found an iPhone containing graphic messages that showed Meek allegedly eager to have sex with children, trading photos and videos with other people through messaging apps such as Kik and Snapchat. The FBI later linked the phone’s SIM card to a number that traveled between North Carolina and South Carolina, noting that IP addresses in both states showed the Kik account being used there, it said.
The department said it also found other devices at the home that contained child porn, including a hard drive with screenshots of a Telegram group chat that seemed to center around child sexual abuse. Letters unsealed in April between the DOJ and Meek’s attorneys showed the department also found evidence that a girl told Meek that she was 16—as he allegedly “pressured” her for nude photos, she told investigators.
Meek has contested the validity of the search in court, arguing first that the department did not share all the necessary evidence against him in discovery and later that the search was illegal. Those motions were shot down, however.
The first sign of a plea change came last month when Meek’s attorneys filed a motion to delay a trial to give them time “to engage in discussions regarding the possible resolution of the case” without one. The trial was pushed back until later this month before Friday’s pre-emption.
“Possessing child sexual abuse material is an extremely egregious offense that perpetuates cycles of sexual abuse of minors,” Foote, the DOJ spokesperson, said. “We hope the Court’s decision today brings a small measure of peace for the victims in the case, emphasizes the serious nature of this conduct, and conveys the weight of the government’s resolve to hold offenders accountable.”
Subscribe to Confider, The Daily Beast’s media newsletter, and get juicy scoops in your inbox every week.
