James Gordon Meek, a former Emmy-winning producer at ABC News, made headlines last year when he disappeared following an FBI raid on his home in the DC suburb of Arlington, Virginia. Meek abruptly resigned from his job following the raid in April 2022, and wasn’t seen again until November, when he was spotted at his mother’s house in nearby McLean, Virginia. Speculation at the time was that the raid was connected to his reporting on the 2017 Pentagon coverup of the deaths of four US special forces soldiers following an ambush by ISIS militants in Nigeria; Meek’s reporting was used as the basis of a Hulu documentary about the ambush.

At the time of his disappearance, Meek was also preparing for the release of a book he co-authored with retired Green Beret Lt. Col. Scott Mann on Joe Biden’s disastrous military withdrawal from Afghanistan entitled, “Operation Pineapple Express: The Incredible Story of a Group of Americans Who Undertook One Last Mission and Honored a Promise in Afghanistan.” Meek’s name was scrubbed from the book following the FBI raid, and his disappearance prompted some to voice concern that Joe Biden had used his weaponized FBI to silence a journalist.

Turns out, however, that the trouble plaguing Meek allegedly was of his own, sinister making. Per court documents, Meek had been engaging in “transportation of images of child sexual abuse.”

According to court documents, the investigation into James Gordon Meek, 53, of Arlington, was initiated from an investigative lead sent by Dropbox and ultimately received by the FBI Washington Field Office’s Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force. That lead ultimately led to a court-authorized search of Meek’s residence in April 2022 by members of the task force, where law enforcement seized multiple devices that allegedly contained evidence of the transportation of images of child sexual abuse.

Apparently, Meek quit his job and went underground not because his journalistic prowess had made him a target, but because the noose was tightening around his predatory neck. According to sources, “FBI agents said they found a cache of horrific images and texts Meek exchanged on Kik and other messaging apps after seizing one of his iPhones when they searched his house in Arlington, Va.”

The affidavit also alleges that Meek, using the handle Pawny4, chatted up other users, once even asking them, “Have you ever raped a toddler girl? It’s amazing.” This was just one of numerous criminal acts he undertook, and federal agents seized from his home devices that had similar conversations in addition to child porn images.

Evidence from affidavit for arrest of former ABC News Producer James Gordon Meek, username "Pawny4" pic.twitter.com/ehDGZSXnQ5

— An Open Secret (@AnOpenSecret) February 1, 2023

Meek now faces federal charges of transportation of child pornography. If convicted, he faces a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison up to a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.