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Former ABC News Producer Pleads Guilty to Child Pornography Charges

James Gordon Meek, a former ABC News producer, has pleaded guilty to "transportation and possession of child sexual abuse material," as reported by the Department of Justice.

US - The ex-newsman's guilty plea comes after his arrest in late January, and he now faces a potential sentence of five to 40 years behind bars. Meek is scheduled for sentencing on September 29.

The charges against Meek are deeply disturbing and involve explicit and vile crimes. Court documents reveal that while visiting South Carolina in February 2020, Meek used an online messaging platform on his iPhone to send and receive images and videos depicting minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct. The content also included discussions about his sexual interest in children. Shockingly, some of the images and videos depicted prepubescent minors and children under the age of 12, including an infant being raped. Upon returning to Virginia, Meek brought the iPhone containing the child sexual abuse material with him.

The FBI Washington Field Office's Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force led the investigation into Meek's actions, which led to his arrest. Meek's arrest and subsequent guilty plea came nine months after his abrupt resignation from ABC News during an FBI search of his home. The investigation started after Dropbox sent a lead to the FBI's Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force, which resulted in a search of Meek's Arlington, VA home. During the search, law enforcement officers seized multiple devices containing evidence of the transportation of images of child sexual abuse.

James Gordon Meek had been a respected military and national security investigative reporter, and he had worked for ABC News since 2013. He had previously served as a senior investigator for the House Homeland Security Committee. With Meek's guilty plea, the justice system will determine the appropriate punishment for these heinous crimes, sending a strong message that such actions will not be tolerated.

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