When it rains, it pours at CNN. Joe Wulfsohn of Fox News reported CNN has suspended one of its producers following a federal indictment accusing him of coercing parents to allow their minor daughters to engage in sexual activity in his home.
John Griffin, a senior producer for CNN's morning program New Day, was arrested on Friday by the FBI after being charged by a grand jury in Vermont "with three counts of using a facility of interstate commerce to attempt to entice minors to engage in unlawful sexual activity."
"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." The U.S. Attorney's office in Vermont issued 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.
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.
And that's not all:
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 New York Post reported on Griffin’s "mainstream media" career:
On his LinkedIn profile, Griffin boasts of having worked “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.”
They worked together during Cuomo’s five years as co-anchor of CNN’s New Day.
Griffin, who calls himself a “father” on his Twitter feed and appears to have three young children, worked at CNN for almost nine years. Prior to that he held producing positions at ABC News, Fox News and CBS.
Perhaps Griffin is innocent of these charges. But CNN isn't known for giving any benefit of the doubt to those accused of sexual abuse...unless they're named Cuomo or Clinton.
