JEFF CHILDERS SUNDAY EXPOSE

In today’s final story, I’ll give the Washington Post credit. It did not sugarcoat —much— the bad news, which it ran yesterday below the headline “Washington Post editor charged with possessing child pornography.”

The arrested editor was Thomas P. LeGro, a rabidly anti-Trump, 18-year newsroom veteran and Pulitzer Prize winner, who was charged with multiple counts of possessing child sex abuse material (CSAM), allegedly stored on his work laptop. Not including the separate hard drive he reportedly smashed with a hammer just before the FBI showed up at his house.

According to the story, LeGro had been in the DOJ’s crosshairs since 2005. A 2006 subpoena linked him to three accounts on a third-party payment service frequently used by child pornographers, all registered with the same phone number and home address: LeGro’s.

Then… nothing. For nearly two decades. Nothing, that is, until Trump 2.0.

In May, the FBI restarted the investigation. This time from the Washington, DC office headed by U.S. Attorney Judge Jeanine Pirro, installed by Trump after the Senate balked at confirming former SDNY prosecutor Emil Bove. Within weeks, the Bureau secured warrants to monitor LeGro’s internet activity, then his home, and then his hard drives. The arrest followed swiftly. The search warrant remains sealed.

LeGro won a Pulitzer in 2024 for his character-assassinating coverage of Alabama Judge Roy Moore, who’d refused to remove the courthouse’s Ten Commandments statue. LeGro is now on leave from WaPo, and faces up to twenty years if convicted.

Props to WaPo for mentioning the 20-year dormancy of LeGro’s investigation. I probably wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. To recap, a Trump-hostile, WaPo-credentialed, award-winning journalist was untouchable for 20 years —even though the FBI long held the evidence it needed to start an investigation— until a new sheriff arrived. Suddenly, his case moved like lightning.

? LeGro’s timeline begs for closer scrutiny.

2005–2006: LeGro is allegedly linked to three suspect accounts tied to a known third-party payment processor used by child pornographers. That alone should’ve triggered a full investigation, or at the very least, an interview. In fact, it did trigger the 2025 investigation. But nothing happened for 19 years.

2006–2024: Just after that, LeGro quietly begins ascending at The Washington Post, eventually helping torpedo Roy Moore and becoming part of a Pulitzer-winning anti-Trump team. It’s not exactly the resume of someone under an active federal cloud.

2024: He’s promoted to Deputy Director of Video across multiple desks —Politics, International, Climate— just in time for the election year. Think about the access. Think about the narrative influence. Think about how useful someone in that position might’ve been.

2025: Trump appoints Judge Jeanine Pirro to head the DC U.S. Attorney’s Office. Within weeks, the LeGro case is dusted off, the surveillance —paused for two decades— resumes, and within days he’s cooling his heels in Club Fed.

If a journalist with a known red flag was left untouched for two decades, someone made that decision. Who? It was probably more than once. Inertia might explain a year or two— but 19 years?

That smells less like oversight and more like insulation.

Which raises a chilling but quite rational question: Was LeGro compromised? And if so, was he being protected because he was doing something valuable for someone in power? And again … who?

To be perfectly clear: there’s no public proof that Thomas P. (“Pervert”) LeGro was an FBI asset. But as a line of rational inquiry, it’s not just plausible. It’s uncomfortably logical.

But wait, there’s more.

? If LeGro’s case was resting on sealed allegations for nearly two decades, he’s can’t possibly be the only one. This is not just an isolated takedown, but a shot across the institutional bow. An entire constellation of bureaucrats, journalists, operatives, and NGO technocrats might now be quietly sweating through their Patagonia fleeces.

LeGro wasn’t some rogue intern. He was a Pulitzer-winning editor shaping national narratives. If he was a protected asset, it raises real questions, like who else in corporate media has been compromised, handled, or fed intelligence to report under the guise of “anonymous sources close to the matter?”

Think about other major reporters who obediently pushed known hoaxes or buried known truths, like Russiagate, Hunter’s laptop, covid origins, et cetera.

They might be —should be— worrying who was watching, and what incriminating evidence might lie in a restricted FBI file somewhere.

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The Epstein network proved that certain “philanthropic” and aid institutions double as honeytraps, laundering outfits, and influence networks. Many of these actors blithely operated under the assumption that having the right ideology was all the insurance they needed. With USAID gutted, the IRS under new scrutiny, DOGE installed, and top-secret FBI classifications exposed, old allies may start flipping, and sealed documents may start unsealing.

Listen, I’m not linking him to Epstein. No, LeGro’s case proves just one tantalizing thing: sealed doesn’t mean forgotten. There are other sealed indictments. Sealed warrants. Sealed FISA requests. And now there’s a political will to reopen them.

Federal investigators never start at the top. They start with low-hanging fruit, where the risk is low and the leverage is high. With people who are expendable, compromised, or stupid enough to break obvious laws in obvious ways. People like Thomas LeGro. Now he’s facing 20 years within a hostile prison population, and has a very strong incentive to talk.

If there’s a wider web of compromised media figures, protected bureaucrats, or criminal-adjacent NGO executives, prosecutors don’t start by kicking in the biggest door. They start with the door that’s already halfway open— and let that person crack open the next one. And the next, and so on, till they get to the big fish.

I could be wrong. This might be just a one-off. But it is a very peculiar case with very peculiar hints of something much bigger growing in the FBI’s new headquarters. We will await further developments with great interest.