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A CNN producer who worked closely with disgraced former anchor Chris Cuomo was charged this week for allegedly attempting to entice parents of underage girls to hand over their daughters for sexual training hosted by himself.
John Griffin, 44, was arrested by the FBI on Friday after he was charged with “three counts of using a facility of interstate commerce to attempt to entice minors to engage in unlawful sexual activity” by a federal grand jury in Vermont.
Griffin, who has a long history of working for corporate media companies and was with CNN for nearly nine years, allegedly used online messaging platforms such as Kik and Google Hangouts from April 2020 to July 2020 to reportedly lure parents and their underage daughters to his house where he bragged that he could teach them sexually. According to the U.S. Department of Justice’s official press release, Griffin allegedly said a “woman is a woman regardless of her age,” and boasted that he could teach girls how to become sexually submissive.
Griffin started in April 2020 by trying to entice minors to engage in sexual activity online and even offered to host a “virtual training session” where he reportedly instructed a mother and daughter to do sexual acts in front of him. In June of 2020, Griffin allegedly convinced and paid a mother with two underage daughters $3,000 to fly her 9-year-old across the country from Nevada to Boston to be “trained properly.”
“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,” the press release stated.
Griffin allegedly made a similar offer to the mother of a 16-year-old girl that same month.
If convicted, Griffin could face life in prison, and “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.”
Griffin often bragged about his closeness to Cuomo, who was fired from the network last week for his role in covering up his brother’s sexual misconduct scandal, on his LinkedIn page.
“LEAD ANCHOR’S SENIOR PRODUCER, CNN ‘NEW DAY.’ Works 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,” Griffin wrote.
