An ABC News investigative reporter, James Gordon Meek, suddenly resigned from his position at the major network after his Virginia home was raided by the FBI last spring, and has since seemingly disappeared. According to the ABC News network, Meek “resigned very abruptly and hasn’t worked for us for months.”
Meek, 52, had not been charged with any crime, but his apartment is reportedly empty and his neighbors have not seen the reporter since the raid in April.
One of Meek’s ex-coworkers reported, “He fell off the face of the Earth. And people asked, but no one knew the answer.”
Other staffers reported having “no idea what happened to Meek.”
Before his disappearance, Meek had a lengthy career investigating matters of military and national security. Prior to the raid, Meek had been co-authoring a book with Lt. Col. Scott Mann, a retired Green Beret. All references to Meek in the book have since been taken out.
Mann commented on Meek being removed from the book, saying, “He contacted me in the spring, and was really distraught, and told me that he had some serious personal issues going on and that he needed to withdraw from the project.”
While the reasons behind the FBI conducting a raid at Meek’s residence in Arlington, Virginia, have remained unknown to the public, sources have alleged that classified documents were found on a laptop belonging to Meek. The FBI’s only statement on the matter has been that they cannot comment “due to an ongoing investigation.”
Meek’s lawyer, Eugene Gorokhov, commented on these claims, saying, “Mr. Meek is unaware of what allegations anonymous sources are making about his possession of classified documents. If such documents exist, as claimed, this would be within the scope of his long career as an investigative journalist covering government wrongdoing.”
Gorokhov also said that it is “highly inappropriate, and illegal, for individuals in the government to leak information about an ongoing investigation.”
Gorokhov did not comment on Meek’s whereabouts.
Rolling Stone journalist Tatiana Siegel reported,
“Multiple sources familiar with the matter say Meek was the target of an FBI raid at the Siena Park apartments, where he had been living on the top floor for more than a decade. An FBI representative told Rolling Stone its agents were present on the morning of April 27… The FBI cannot comment further due to an ongoing investigation. Meek has been charged with no crime. But independent observers believe the raid is among the first — and quite possibly, the first — to be carried out on a journalist by the Biden administration.
[…]
A federal magistrate judge in the Virginia Eastern District Court signed off on the search warrant the day before the raid. If the raid was for Meek’s records, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco would have had to give her blessing; a new policy enacted last year prohibits federal prosecutors from seizing journalists’ documents. Any exception requires the deputy AG’s approval. In the raid’s aftermath… Meek has made himself scarce.”
