A former ABC News senior producer and senior counter-terrorism advisor to the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security who boasted of having raped a toddler in an explicit video pleaded guilty today to transportation and possession of child sexual abuse material.
According to court documents, while visiting South Carolina in February 2020, James Gordon Meek, 53, of Arlington, Virginia, 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.
Some of the images and videos depicted prepubescent minors and minors under the age of 12, including an infant being raped.
Meek brought the iPhone containing the child sexual abuse material back with him when he returned to Virginia.
Meek is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 29. He faces a mandatory minimum of five years in prison and a maximum penalty of 40 years in prison.
A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
During his time as a journalist, Meek held prominent positions covering the justice system, military, and foreign intelligence desks.
On April 27, 2022, Meek’s home was raided by the FBI, more than a year after the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received a tip from Dropbox that Meek’s account had uploaded five videos depicting the sexual abuse of children, leading to an investigation alongside Project Safe Childhood.
The FBI seized digital devices allegedly containing hundreds of images of child pornography, including attention on one of a young boy in a BDSM theme.
Meek was also accused of participating in group chats that traded child abuse materials.
Investigators found that Meek engaged with minors as young as 12 on social media, including posing as a female minor himself, promising to help them meet their hero, and sextorted nude photos of minors.
The FBI alleges he had written about cooperating with a younger woman to bear a child together who wanted to sexually molest the infant together with him.
On January 31, 2023, Meek was arrested and charged with transporting child pornography, which calls for a minimum of five years and up to 20 years in prison.
The Department of Justice released the FBI Affidavit that reports Meek writing to another individual “Have you ever raped a toddler girl? It’s amazing.”, and repeatedly sharing a video showing the rape of an infant girl.
The FBI allegations cover other “extremely disturbing details” about the actions of Meek, which included engaging “in sexually explicit conversations where the participants expressed enthusiasm for the sexual abuse of children”.
The US Attorney’s office reported that “In speaking with law enforcement after the search, [Meek] told them that his life was over”.
In denying bail, the US District Judge expressed concerns about Meek engaging in the “grooming process”.
Meek will remain in jail pending trial. While electronic devices including four laptops were seized in the FBI raid, the government only managed to decrypt the contents of a single laptop as of April 20, 2023, limiting the reach of “this case” while leaving open the possibility of further criminal prosecution as they processed the other three laptops.
Meek has filed a motion to compel, in which he references his belief that a constitutional reporter’s privilege should prevent the child sex offense investigators from looking at any files other than “visual depictions” that may be on his electronics, but the Department of Justice successfully rebutted, “There is no basis for the assertion of any such privilege when the reporter has himself committed the criminal offense, and even less so where, as here, the crime is unrelated to his newsgathering activities.”
Meek was considered the first example of the “(d)(1)(i)” exception to the new policy Attorney General Merrick Garland introduced in 2022 to protect the Justice Department’s ability to investigate actual crimes that may be committed by a journalist otherwise hiding behind enhanced protections against search and seizure given their role in a functioning democracy.
Two further charges were brought in March 2023, and in July 2023 Meek announced his intentions to plead guilty to unknown lesser charges which his lawyer Eugene Gorokhov stressed do not involve actual physical contact with minors.