Chris Cuomo’s CNN producer, John Griffin, was charged on Friday, December 10, 2021, with luring underage girls to his Vermont estate to engage in unlawful sexual activity, according to the Office of the United States Attorney for the District of Vermont.
Griffin, 44, of Stamford, Connecticut was arrested Friday by the Federal Bureau of Investigation after a federal grand jury in Vermont charged him with three counts of using a facility of interstate commerce to attempt to entice minors.
Griffin, has been a producer with CNN for about eight years who says on his LinkedIn profile, that he worked “shoulder to shoulder” with now-disgraced ex-anchor “Chris Cuomo, seeing him through each show and producing live breaking news across the country and around the world.”
CNN fired Cuomo after an outside law firm determined he inappropritately aided his brother, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in the period before he resigned as governor rather than face impeachment when an investigation substantiated numerous accusations of sexual harassment.
“The charges against Mr. Griffin are deeply disturbing,” said a spokesperson for the network. “We only learned of his arrest yesterday afternoon and have suspended him pending investigation.”
According to the indictment, from April to July of 2020, Griffin utilized the messaging applications Kik and Google Hangouts to communicate with people purporting to be parents of minor daughters, conveying to them, among other ideas, that a “woman is a woman regardless of her age,” and that women should be sexually subservient and inferior to men.
On these communication platforms, Griffin, a father himself, sought to persuade parents to allow him to train their daughters to be sexually submissive.
In June of 2020, Griffin advised a mother of 9- and 13-year-old daughters that the mother’s responsibility was to see that her older daughter was “trained properly.”
Griffin later transferred over $3,000 to the mother for plane tickets so the mother and her 9-year-old daughter could fly from Nevada to Boston’s Logan airport.
The mother and child flew to Boston in July of 2020, where Griffin picked them up in his Tesla and drove them to his Ludlow house. At the house, the daughter was directed to engage in, and did engage in, unlawful sexual activity.
The indictment also includes specific allegations that Griffin attempted to entice two other children over the internet to engage in sexual activity.
In April of 2020, Griffin proposed to engage in a “virtual training session” over a video chat that would include him instructing the mother and her 14-year-old daughter to remove their clothing and touch each other at his direction.
In June of 2020, the defendant proposed to a purported mother of a 16-year-old daughter that she take a “little mother-daughter trip” to Griffin’s Ludlow ski house for sexual training involving the child.
On each count, Griffin faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years of imprisonment and a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
The indictment includes a notice that states the federal government intends to seek the forfeiture of Griffin’s Ludlow house, his Tesla, a Mercedes, and other property that was used in the commission of the charged offenses.