Federal law enforcement officials arrested a senior CNN producer this week, who used to work with former host Chris Cuomo, for allegedly engaging in sexual activity with children.
John Griffin, 44, of Stamford, Connecticut, was arrested on Friday after a federal grand jury charged him with multiple counts of using a facility of interstate commerce to attempt to entice minors to engage in unlawful sexual activity.
The DOJ said in a statement:
According to the indictment, from April to July of 2020, Griffin utilized the messaging applications Kik and Google Hangouts to communicate with people purporting to be parents of minor daughters, conveying to them, among other ideas, that a “woman is a woman regardless of her age,” and that women should be sexually subservient and inferior to men. On these communication platforms, Griffin sought to persuade parents to allow him to train their daughters to be sexually submissive.
The statement said that Griffin advised a mother of two daughters, ages 9 and 13, that it was her responsibility to make sure that her children were “trained properly.”
“Griffin later transferred over $3,000 to the mother for plane tickets so the mother and her 9-year-old daughter could fly from Nevada to Boston’s Logan airport,” DOJ said. “The mother and child flew to Boston in July of 2020, where Griffin picked them up in his Tesla and drove them to his Ludlow house. At the house, the daughter was directed to engage in, and did engage in, unlawful sexual activity.”
The statement further added:
The indictment also includes specific allegations that Griffin attempted to entice two other children over the internet to engage in sexual activity. In April of 2020, Griffin proposed to engage in a “virtual training session” over a video chat that would include him instructing the mother and her 14-year-old daughter to remove their clothing and touch each other at his direction. In June of 2020, Griffin proposed to a purported mother of a 16-year-old daughter that she take a “little mother-daughter trip” to Griffin’s Ludlow ski house for sexual training involving the child.
Griffin’s LinkedIn account said that he worked on CNN’s “New Day,” which is the show that was co-hosted by Cuomo for a number of years before Cuomo got his own show in primetime. Griffin specifically stated on LinkedIn that he “works shoulder-to-shoulder with lead anchor Chris Cuomo, seeing him through each show and producing live breaking news across the country and around the world.”
Griffin faces up a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years for each of the three felony counts that he was charged with, and could face up to life in prison.
DOJ also said that it “intends to seek the forfeiture of Griffin’s Ludlow house, his Tesla, a Mercedes, and other property that was used in the commission of the charged offenses.”
“We take the charges against Mr. Griffin incredibly seriously,” a CNN spokesperson told Fox News. “We only learned of his arrest this afternoon and have suspended him pending investigation.”