Washington Post journalist charged with possession of child pornography
Washington Post journalist charged with possession of child pornography
An award-winning journalist with the Washington Post made his first court appearance on Friday after being charged with possession of child pornography.
WASHINGTON - An award-winning journalist with the Washington Post made his first court appearance on Friday after being charged with possession of child pornography.
What we know:
The Department of Justice announced charges against Thomas Pham LeGro, 48, on Friday. LeGro is the Deputy Director of Video at the Washington Post.
The DOJ says that on June 26, FBI agents executed a search warrant at LeGro’s residence and seized several electronic devices. Authorities say that they found a folder that contained 11 videos depicting child sexual abuse material on LeGro’s work laptop.
During the search, FBI agents also reported that they saw what appeared to be fractured pieces of a hard drive in the hallway outside the room where LeGro’s work laptop was found.
Dig deeper:
According to a personnel profile on the Washington Post's website, LeGro serves as the Deputy Director of Video.
They say he joined the video department in 2013 as an editor on the breaking-news desk and in 2015 became the senior producer overseeing the International, Style and Technology teams.
In 2017, he was part of the team of Post reporters awarded a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Senate candidacy of Roy Moore. He was then promoted to executive producer in 2021, overseeing the Post's Politics, National, International and Technology teams.
His honors and awards are listed as the following:
Pulitzer Prize, part of team that won for Investigative Reporting, 2018; Murrow Award, part of team that won for investigative reporting, 2018 ; Robin Toner Prize, part of team that won for Excellence in Political Reporting, 2018; Murrow Award, part of team that won for continuing coverage of the opioid crisis in America, 2017; Webby Award, part of team that won in Film & Video: Music for "The Inside Story of When RUN‑DMC Met Aerosmith and Changed Music Forever," 2017; Emmy nomination, part of team that earned the nod for outstanding breaking news coverage of the Pulse nightclub shooting, 2017; Webby Award and People's Voice Winner, part of team that won in Documentary: Longform for "The Assassination of Jamal Khashoggi," 2020
A Washington Post spokesperson provided a statement to FOX 5, saying, "The Washington Post understands the severity of these allegations, and the employee has been placed on leave."
What's next:
The case is being investigated by the FBI Washington Field Office’s Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force, which is composed of FBI agents, along with other federal agents and detectives from northern Virginia and the District of Columbia.
The task force is charged with investigating and bringing federal charges against individuals engaged in the exploitation of children and those engaged in human trafficking.