Ex-ABC Senior Producer Who Rolling Stone Covered For Indicted On Child Porn Charges

Former ABC senior producer James Gordon Meek has been indicted on three counts of child pornography nearly one year after the FBI raided his Arlington, Virginia home.

If convicted, the Emmy-winning producer faces between five and 20 years in prison for transporting images of child pornography.

According to the NY Post, and noted by the Daily Mail, Meek’s alleged pedophilia was exposed after Dropbox dropped the dime on him – alerting authorities to child porn stored on his account in March 2021.

Several of Meek’s devices allegedly contained images depicting children engaged in sexually explicit conduct, and multiple chat conversations with users engaged in sexually explicit conversations where the participants expressed enthusiasm for the sexual abuse of children, according to the DOJ release.

In two of those conversations, a username allegedly associated with Meek received and distributed child sexual abuse materials through an internet-based messaging platform, as per the DOJ.  

Following the raid, the department obtained a search warrant for Meek’s iCloud account on November 14. They contained backups of two of his devices and included a screenshot of one of the explicit discussions.

They also uncovered an Apple laptop that contained ‘approximately 90 images and videos of child pornography.’ -Daily Mail

Meek, a divorced father of two, also allegedly had Snapchat and Instagram accounts that contained conversations and images of unidentified minor females.

Rolling Stone EIC covered for him

As we noted last month, after the FBI conducted a raid on a journalist last April, Rolling Stone framed it as an abuse of power – writing that it was “quite possibly, the first” carried out by the Biden administration on a reporter – in this case, former ABC national security reporter James Gordon Meek, who was previously an investigator for the House Homeland Security Committee.

The truth is that Editor-in-Chief Noah Shachtman edited the article to remove all mention that the raid was part of a federal investigation into child porn, according to NPR.

As edited by Rolling Stone Editor-in-Chief Noah Shachtman, however, the article omitted a key fact that Siegel initially intended to include: Siegel had learned from her sources that Meek had been raided as part of a federal investigation into images of child sex abuse, something not publicly revealed until last month.

Why did Rolling Stone suggest Meek was targeted for his coverage of national security, rather than something unrelated to his journalism?

NPR also reported, citing two anonymous sources, that Washington attorney Mark “I’ve gotten clearances for guys who had child porn issues and love hanging out at Disney World by myself” Zaid called Shachtman on Meek’s behalf while Siegel was writing up the story.

Zaid confirmed to NPR that he called Shachtman – and admitted that Meek was a longtime friend and client who he was representing on any potential prosecution or investigation of his potential possession of classified material.