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CNN Staffer Arrested, Charged With Soliciting Minors For Sex

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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


A staffer for CNN has been arrested and charged with an absolutely horrific crime.

A grand jury in Vermont indicted John Griffin, a 44-year-old Stamford, Connecticut resident, on charges of attempting to entice young girls into sexual activity, The Daily Mail reported

Griffin worked on the CNN show “New Day.” He has been charged with three counts that he used a “facility of interstate commerce to abuse underage girls.”

Griffin began working with CNN in 2013, working on New Day when Chris Cuomo was its host. 

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His most recent role saw him acting as a producer for CNN senior political analyst John Avlon. 

“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.  In June of 2020, Griffin advised a mother of 9- and 13-year-old daughters that the mother’s responsibility was to see that her older daughter was ‘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.  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,” a press release from the Department of Justice, US Attorney’s Office, District of Vermont, read.

“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,” the DOJ said.

“The United States Attorney’s Office emphasizes that an indictment contains allegations only and that Griffin remains presumed innocent until and unless he is convicted of a crime.  On each count, Griffin faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years of imprisonment and a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.  The indictment includes a notice that states the federal government 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,” it said.

It is another blow to the news network that has been engulfed in scandals recently. It started with its firing of primetime anchor Chris Cuomo for, not only helping his brother, disgraced former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo but also, apparently, allegations of sexual impropriety.

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And even more recently, accusations by actor Jussie Smollett, who was convicted on five counts related to lying to police about a fake hate crime he alleged was done against him by supporters of Donald Trump because he is black and gay, that Don Lemon, another primetime anchor, tipped him off to the fact that police did not believe his story, The Daily Wire reported.

In testimony, Smollett partly clarified why he did not initially give over his phone by stating that “he declined to give his phone to CPD in part because earlier he’d gotten a text from Don Lemon ‘saying he’d gotten a text from CPD saying they don’t believe me,’” according to Chicago Tribune Reporter Megan Crepeau.

Crepeau noted that Smollett said he also had a private photo on the device as well as contact information for “my boss, everybody, my mom, my family, my siblings, there are extremely important activists in my phone, extremely important executives and actors and actresses and singers.”