ABC Producer Who Abruptly Quit Faces Child Porn Charge

When ABC News investigative producer James Gordon Meek abruptly quit in April last year after an FBI raid on his home, there were concerns that the raid may have been connected to his work. Instead, it was connected to a child pornography investigation and agents found images and videos of child sexual abuse on Meek's devices, the FBI said in a court filing made public Wednesday. Meeks, whose last report for ABC was published days before the raid, was taken into custody Tuesday night. The 53-year-old will face a mandatory minimum of five years and maximum of 20 years in prison if convicted on a charge of transporting child pornography, the Washington Post reports.

According to court papers, the FBI began its investigation in March 2021 after Dropbox reported that a user with the name James Meek was storing videos showing the sexual abuse of children, the AP reports. The IP address was a match with Meek's apartment in Arlington, Virginia. The FBI said an iPhone found in Meek's apartment had been used to exchange videos of minors being sexually abused with another use of the Kik app. Almost 100 images and videos of minors were found on two devices in Meek's apartment, the FBI said. At a hearing Wednesday, Assistant US Attorney Zoe Bedell said Meek had pretended to be a young girl in chats online with minors and suspected minors.

An affidavit states that one girl told investigators Meek "had approached her through Snapchat and had pressured her to provide pictures depicting sexually explicit conduct." Bedell said data found on Meek's devices showed he sought materials involving children as young as infants, the Post reports. "In speaking with law enforcement after the search, he told them that his life was over," Bedell said. Meek, who covered military and national security issues, served as an investigator for the House Committee on Homeland Security before joining ABC in 2013. After the April raid, colleagues told Rolling Stone that he "fell off the face of the Earth." (More child sex abuse stories.)