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CNN producer charged with luring women and their underage daughters into unlawful sexual activity

December 11, 2021 | | Print Article

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CNN is not sending its best …

Already under fire because of the Chris Cuomo scandal and more recent Don Lemon scandal, CNN is again facing heat, this time over a staffer who was arrested and charged this week with sexual crimes involving children.

The exact charges filed against CNN senior producer John Griffin include “three counts of using a facility of interstate commerce to attempt to entice minors to engage in unlawful sexual activity,” according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Vermont.

The statement notes that “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.”

Citing this pedophilic philosophy, he then tried to persuade the parents “to allow him to train their daughters to be sexually submissive.”

One Nevada mother reportedly agreed in June of 2020 to fly to Boston with her 9-year-old daughter, after which Griffin picked them up, took them to his home and then proceeded to abuse the woman’s daughter.

“At the house, the daughter was directed to engage in, and did engage in, unlawful sexual activity,” according to USAO – Vermont.

Griffin reportedly tried pulling off the same scheme two additional times.

First Time: “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.”

Second Time: “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 is no small-time player at CNN. His LinkedIn profile explicitly notes that he’s worked at CNN for nearly nine full years as a “senior producer” for “New Day.”

It also brags that during disgraced, former CNN host Chris Cuomo’s tenure as the lead anchor on “New Day,” he worked “shoulder-to-shoulder with” him, “seeing him through each show and producing live breaking news across the country and around the world.”

(Source: LinkedIn)

However, his LinkedIn profile also shows that his past work included gigs at ABC News, CBS News and even Fox News. In fairness to Fox News, his stint with them occurred two decades ago, from May 2002 to June 2005.

Griffin boasts a Twitter account that hasn’t been active in 2019. The account is littered with photos showing him at work.

Look:

It also contains photos of Cuomo, who was recently ousted from the network over what appears to be his own sexual scandal, albeit one reportedly not involving children.

If convicted on the charges he currently faces, Griffin is reportedly looking at up to life in prison.

As of Friday afternoon, he had been suspended from CNN.

“We take the charges against Mr. Griffin incredibly seriously. We only learned of his arrest this afternoon and have suspended him pending investigation,” a network spokesperson said in a statement to the Daily Mail.

His suspension came only days after Cuomo was fired following his own suspension. It’s not clear yet why he was ousted.

Some believe it was because of bombshell confirmations that he’d leveraged his power at CNN to help his brother, disgraced former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, fight off sexual harassment/assault accusations.

But others believe it was because of newly emerged sexual harassment/assault accusations against the since-fired CNN host himself.

“On Wednesday [Dec. 1st.],  Debra S. Katz, a prominent employment lawyer, informed CNN of a client with an allegation of sexual misconduct against Chris Cuomo. Ms. Katz said in a statement on Saturday that the allegation against the anchor, which was made by a former junior colleague at another network, was ‘unrelated to the Gov. Andrew Cuomo matter,” as reported by The New York Times.

“It was not fully clear what role the allegation played in CNN’s decision to dismiss Mr. Cuomo. Ms. Katz is also the lawyer for Charlotte Bennett, a one-time aide to Andrew Cuomo who accused the former governor in February of sexual harassment.”

Vivek Saxena
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