Ex-ABC News reporter James Gordon Meek to plead guilty in child porn case

Former ABC News reporter James Gordon Meek is scheduled to plead guilty later this week in a case accusing him of exchanging child porn content and sending disturbing messages about his alleged perverted desires.

Meek, 53, the former national security journalist, has an appearance scheduled in Virginia federal court on Friday to change his plea, court records show.

If Meek had been convicted at trial, he would have faced a minimum of five years in prison and a maximum of 20 years. But if he takes a plea deal he could face a much lighter sentence.

The once-acclaimed reporter was hit with charges in February some 10 months after the FBI raided his Arlington home and seized his electronics on April 27, 2022.

The probe was triggered after Dropbox alerted officials that child porn was being stored on Meek’s account.

The feds discovered on Meek’s phone three conversations expressing his desire to sexually abuse children, an FBI agent said in an affidavit around the time of his arrest.

The agent also saw that Meek allegedly had received and sent photos and videos of child pornography and a troubling message asking another user, “Have you ever raped a toddler girl? It’s amazing.”

Meek also allegedly talked about his fantasy of “abducting, drugging, and raping” a user as a 12-year-old girl.

The feds say that Meek also hoarded child porn images and videos on his other electronic devices and he’d had conversations with minors on chat platforms.

Meek began with ABC news in 2013 after working for the New York Daily News where in 2006 he broke the news that Al-Qaeda’s plan to bomb New York City’s tunnels was snuffed out.

He also served as a senior counterterrorism advisor and investigator for the US House Committee on Homeland Security starting in 2011. And he won an Emmy award in 2017 for breaking news coverage of the Pulse nightclub shooting.

Meek resigned from the network immediately after the raid of his home.

The US Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Virginia confirmed the change of plea hearing was scheduled but declined to comment further.

Meek’s criminal defense attorney didn’t immediately return a request for comment Tuesday.