Former ABC News Journalist Sentenced To 6 Years In Child Porn Case

ARLINGTON, VA — A former journalist for ABC News, who often broke investigative stories on national security issues, was sentenced Friday to six years in prison for transportation and possession of child sexual abuse material, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

The former journalist, James Gordon Meek, 53, of Arlington, pleaded guilty to the charges in July and was awaiting sentencing. Senior U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton announced the sentence on Friday.

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 and to discuss his sexual interest in children, according to court documents.

Some of the images and videos depicted prepubescent minors and minors under the age of 12, including an infant being raped, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia said.

The actions turned into a federal case when Meek brought the iPhone containing the child sexual abuse material back with him when he returned to Virginia. Meek possessed multiple electronic devices containing images and videos of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct, according to court documents.

Meek was arrested in February on one count of transporting child pornography images. He was later formally indicted in March on three counts, including transportation, distribution, and possession of child porn.

In his plea agreement in July, Meek pleaded guilty to transportation and possession, each carrying a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. The plea agreement dismissed the distribution count.

Meek's last report for ABC News was published April 2022, days before the FBI searched his apartment on Columbia Pike in Arlington. He resigned from ABC News the same month, the network said.

Federal officials said the investigation into Meek began in March 2021, when the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received a tip from the company Dropbox about five suspected child pornography videos stored on one of its users’ accounts. The FBI said in court documents that the Dropbox username was “James Meek,” and the internet protocol address was a match with Meek’s apartment, The Washington Post reported.

That lead led the FBI to conduct a court-authorized search of Meek’s Arlington home on April 27, 2002, in the Siena Park apartments in the 2300 block of Columbia Pike. The FBI and police showed up in several vehicles, including a Lenco BearCat armored SWAT vehicle, at Meek's residence for the search.

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