Do you remember James Meek’s story? Rolling Stone published an article about him that described a raid on his Virginia house in October last year. Meek was then lost to history. Nobody knew where he was. His sudden disappearance caused tongues to wag and led to speculation about his motives. Meek was an ABC News investigative reporter and produced the documentary 3212 un-redacted. The documentary discussed the deaths of four U.S. troops in Nigeria and the possible cover-ups by the U.S. Army.
Rolling Stone featured Meek’s experiences covering national security and military issues, as well as a conversation Meeks had at one time with Marc Polymeropoulos (ex-CIA agent) about U.S. support for Ukraine in its war with Russia. People began to wonder if Meeks had discovered something about the Biden administration, or another person when Meeks went underground. What was James Meek’s secret and why was he hiding? Glenn Beck even asked the question on his radio show. It was all quite mysterious, and almost invited people to speculate on deep-state conspiracies.
Meek then resurfaced at the home of his mother, stating that he didn’t want to make it difficult for his colleagues. Meek also resigned. Meek was again removed from the public eye as the news cycle moved on.
We now know why Meek went unnoticed and why the Feds raided Meek’s home in October. Meek wasn’t a whistleblower. Meek was not going to open the doors to anything and was not in possession of state secrets. However, he was in possession of child pornography.
A press release by the Department of Justice stated that the FBI received information from Dropbox. This provided enough information to allow the agency to search Meek’s home. Agents found evidence that Meek had transported images of child sexual abuse on several devices.
According to court documents, several of Meek’s devices contained images of children engaging in sexually explicit conduct. There were also multiple chat conversations in which users engaged in explicit sexual conversations in which participants encouraged the sexual abuse of children. Meek allegedly received child sexual abuse materials via an internet-based messaging platform.
Meek was taken into custody Tuesday night and charged with transporting child pornography. Meek could face a mandatory minimum sentence in prison of five years and a maximum sentence in prison of 20 years if convicted.
You will find the affidavit at the bottom of this press release. I strongly recommend that you do not read it. When I was a reporter, I had to read many of these affidavits and I wasn’t prepared for what I saw. The affidavit is extremely graphic and contains many depressing, sickening, and angry portions. Meek was at a point of total depravity, which is frankly beyond description.
You might be tempted to demand that Meek’s head be cut off from his body or to inflict some other punishment. That is perfectly understandable. If you have children, you can vent your anger and go to the place where your child uses their phone, tablet, or laptop. Take a look at the entire thing, file by file and app by app. If you are concerned, contact your local police department. They have officers who can recover data. While your child might be upset, it’s not your right as a parent to know where your child is in cyberspace. It is your responsibility to keep your child safe from internet-dwelling monsters such as James Meek.
