James Gordon Meek, an ABC News reporter and investigative journalist, “fell off the face of the Earth” and has not been seen by anyone since the FBI raid in April on his home, Rolling Stone reported.
The FBI informed Rolling Stone that agents were at the scene on April 27 “at the 2300 block of Columbia Pike, Arlington, Virginia, conducting court-authorized law-enforcement activity,” which is where Meek resided at his Siena Park apartment for more than 10 years.
“The FBI cannot comment further due to an ongoing investigation,” a spokesperson from the Bureau explained.
After the incident, none of Meek's friends or coworkers have seen him. Meek sent a final tweet in the early hours of April 27th.
“He fell off the face of the Earth,” a neighbor of Meek told Rolling Stone. “And people asked, but no one knew the answer.”
Rolling Stone was told by ABC News that Meek “resigned very abruptly and hasn’t worked for us for months.”
Meek was also scheduled to publish a novel for Simon & Schuster that tells the tale of a retired Green Beret who was instrumental in assisting in the evacuation of over 500 Afghans during President Joe Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal, with co-author Lieutenant Colonel Scott Mann, a retired Green Beret.
But Meek's name and photograph have been removed from the book and all the media materials since after the FBI raid.
Mann revealed to Rolling Stone that Meek was struggling with “some serious personal issues” which prevented Meek from working on the book.
Mann stated:
He reached out to me in the spring. He was extremely upset, and informed me that he was dealing with several serious personal issues taking place and that he had to end the project. As a an active combat veteran who's witnessed this type of strain I'm not certain what caused it I was able to honor the request. Then he continued on his way and I carried on with the work.
FBI agents were reportedly able to find classified data on Meek's laptop during the raid, according to Rolling Stones’ sources.
Biden's Department of Justice (DOJ) adopted a policy in the year 2001 which prohibits federal authorities from securing a journalist's files without obtaining permission from the deputy attorney general. This implies that U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco would have had to approve the raid, if reports of the documents that were seized are true.
But Meek's lawyer Eugene Gorokhov, refuted Rolling Stones’ reports and called on the DOJ to look into the possible leak.
Gorokhov said to Rolling Stone:
Mr. Meek is unaware of what allegations anonymous sources are making about his possession of classified documents. If such documents exist, as claimed, this would be within the scope of his long career as an investigative journalist covering government wrongdoing. The allegations in your inquiry are troubling for a different reason: they appear to come from a source inside the government. It is highly inappropriate, and illegal, for individuals in the government to leak information about an ongoing investigation. We hope that the DOJ promptly investigates the source of this leak.
In his long career as a journalist, Meek was the source of numerous high-profile news stories on national security as well as the threat of terrorism.
In addition, Meek produced the Hulu documentary 3212 Un-Redacted which was based on his reporting of the 2017 ISIS ambush in Niger which caused the death of four Green Berets.
