John Griffin, a senior producer at CNN who has been working for the network for eight years, was recently arrested. He was allegedly involved in sexual activity with minors. He is currently in custody. Griffin’s arraignment is scheduled to take place in Vermont on Dec. 15.
“The charges against Mr. Griffin are deeply disturbing. We only learned of his arrest yesterday afternoon and have suspended him pending investigation,” CNN said in a statement.
Griffin had paid three thousand dollars to the mother of 13-year-old and 9-year-old girls from Nevada so that the mother and her younger daughter could fly to Boston and meet him. The incident took place in July last year.
Prior to that, he had texted the mother several times, one of which read, “One of the big lies of this society is that women are delicate innocent angels and they are in actuality, naturally, the dirtiest [profanity] possible, in EVERY metric.”
In another text, Griffin told the mother that “when handled appropriately, a woman is a woman regardless of her age.” He asked the woman to ensure that her 13-year-old girl was “trained properly.”
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On their arrival in Boston, Griffin then picked the mother and nine-year-old from the airport in his Tesla car and took them to his house in Ludlow. Once there, he proceeded to provide directions to the daughter to engage in illegal sexual activity, which she eventually did. There are also allegations that Griffin had tried to persuade two other girls, ages 14 and 16, over the internet to behave in a sexual manner with their mothers.
Between April and July of last year, the 44-year-old had been utilizing online chatting apps such as Hangouts and Kik to reach out to people who claimed they were parents to minor daughters. He allegedly was trying to convince these people about his ideas such as “a woman is a woman regardless of her age” and that women should be behaving in a sexually subservient fashion with men since they are inferior.
Griffin stands to face at least 10 years in prison for each charge and a maximum sentence of life. Federal prosecutors are also seeking the forfeiture of various items of property owned by Griffin that were used to commit the various offenses he has been charged with. This included his Mercedes and Tesla cars and his Ludlow residence.
John Griffin started his career with CNN in 2013. He worked for the show New Day hosted by Chris Cuomo, who, coincidentally, was fired the previous week. Chris Cuomo had been using his media connections while attempting to neutralize sexual harassment charges against his brother, former governor Andrew Cuomo. Griffin’s last engagement for CNN was serving as a producer for senior political analyst John Avlon.
