CNN Producer Arrested, Charged With Luring Minors To Engage In 'Sexual Training'

The FBI on Friday arrested a CNN producer and charged him with "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.

John Griffin, 44 of Stamford, Connecticut, was a senior producer for CNN’s “New Day” since April 2013, according to his LinkedIn profile. He also had worked at ABC News for nearly eight years and Fox News for over three years.

Griffin allegedly was using messaging apps like Kik and Google Hangouts to contact the parents of minor daughters. He would tell them that “a woman is a woman regardless of her age,” and that he should be able to “properly train” their 13-year-old daughter to be “sexually subservient and inferior to men.”

The statement from the U.S. Attorney's Office cited that, "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 transferred $3,000 to the mother in June 2020 for airplane tickets from Nevada to Boston. The mother and daughter then flew to meet him at his Vermont home in July 2020, according to the indictment.

At Griffin's home, the girl was then "directed to engage in and did engage in illegal sexual activity," the indictment reads.

Griffin faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison or up to life in prison for each charge.

A CNN spokesperson on Saturday confirmed that Griffin has been suspended.

"We take the charges against Mr. Griffin incredibly seriously," read the statement. "We only learned of his arrest this afternoon and have suspended him pending investigation."