Feds: CNN Producer Tried To Pay Off Sex Crimes Witness

John Griffin

Fired CNN producer John Griffin tried to “deceive, delete, and spend his way out of being held accountable” for his alleged sex crimes against a minor, reports The NY Post citing new court documents.

Griffin, 44, was indicted this month by a federal grand jury in Vermont for attempting to “induce minors to engage in unlawful sexual activity,” and allegedly bragged about luring girls as young as 7 to his home for “sexual subservience” training.

The former producer who boasted about working “shoulder to shoulder” with Chris Cuomo was fired by CNN following his arrest and is facing up to 10 years in prison for each of the three counts he is facing in charges involving a 9-year-old girl.

In a motion to keep him in jail until his trial, US Attorney Nikolas P. Kerest said Griffin’s detention is crucial to community safety. He is “a wealthy man who is desperate to avoid facing justice” with a history of mental illness, substance abuse and alleged sexual assault of minor, Kerest said, who cited Jeffrey Epstein court docs in the motion.

The motion, filed Monday, offers more details about Griffin’s alleged actions, including that he offered a woman $30,000 in January 2020 for a mother-and-daughter getaway. In March 2020, he offered another woman $1,200 for sex, saying he would up the payment to $5,000 “if the kids are in the room,” the feds said.

Prosecutors said in their complaint that Griffin, of Stamford, Connecticut, attempted to lure at least four girls, ages 16, 14, 13 and 9, to his Vermont ski house for “training sessions” on such things as “spanking” and “c–k worship,” reportedly saying a “woman is a woman regardless of her age.”

Griffin allegedly told Heather Carriker, a mother of two daughters, that she needed to ensure her girls were “trained properly,” the DOJ said. Then, in July 2020, he allegedly gave Carriker $3,000 to fly with her 9-year-old from their home in Henderson, Nevada, to Boston, where he picked the two up and brought them to his $2.5 million Vermont mansion. During the visit, “the daughter was directed to engage in, and did engage in, unlawful sexual activity,” the DOJ said, that Carriker, 48, was also a part of.

Feds said in the Monday filing that “there is no set of conditions that can assure the Court of [Griffin’s] continued appearance or address the danger he presents if released.”

“He has dishonestly tried to talk his way out of being held accountable. He has tried to buy his way out of trouble,” they wrote.