Highlights
- Sony suspended Jim Thornton after a passenger’s photos of alleged pedophilia chatroom activity on a flight.
- His attorney says Thornton visited the site by accident and was never arrested or charged with a crime.
- American Airlines confirms law enforcement met the flight at LAX after a customer’s onboard complaint was filed.
Sony Pictures Television has suspended longtime Wheel of Fortune announcer Jim Thornton after a fellow airline passenger says she saw disturbing chatroom content on his laptop screen during a flight this past May.
“We have recently been made aware of allegations concerning Jim Thornton,” a Sony spokesperson said in a statement. “He has been suspended from Wheel of Fortune and we are recasting while we conduct a thorough investigation.”
According to TMZ, the incident happened May 14 on American Airlines Flight 1276 from Charlotte to Los Angeles. A passenger seated near Thornton told a flight attendant she saw messages in an open chatroom referencing children in a sexual context, and handed over photos she’d taken of his screen.
The captain radioed ahead. American Airlines confirmed to E! News that the flight “was met by law enforcement upon arrival at Los Angeles International Airport on May 14 following concerns reported by a customer onboard.”
TMZ reports officers questioned Thornton at the gate — “wearing a ‘Wheel’ jacket at the time,” per the outlet — before releasing him. He has not been arrested. He has not been charged with a crime.
His attorney, Allison Hart, gives a very different account. She says Thornton has spent the past two years immersed in suicide-prevention advocacy, “since losing a close family member to suicide two years ago, and he has spent time visiting chat rooms offering support to individuals suffering from suicidal ideation.”
Hart says an acquaintance from that world sent Thornton a link that redirected him away from his intended destination — the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline’s own site — and onto lifeline.chat instead. “When my client understood what the website was about, he left the page and has not visited since,” she told TMZ. Photo timestamps reviewed by the outlet suggest he was on the page for roughly 57 minutes.
Hart is emphatic that nothing illegal took place. “There is no unlawful child pornography or other pedophilic content,” she said, adding that Thornton “never viewed, downloaded or consumed any child pornography whether on that commercial flight in May or at any other time.”
She described the airport questioning as brief and conclusive. Officers, she said, “spoke to him for five minutes or less, immediately determined that no wrongdoing had occurred and told my client he was free to go.” Her verdict: “In short, my client did nothing wrong.”
The timeline is notable. The flight was in May; Sony didn’t announce the suspension until September 1, and TMZ published the photos two days later. In between, Thornton kept working — he appeared in a pre-taped episode alongside Ryan Seacrest the same evening the suspension became public.
Thornton has announced Wheel of Fortune since 2011, stepping in after Charlie O’Donnell‘s death, and has called both the syndicated show and its celebrity spinoff. He worked alongside Pat Sajak and Vanna White for over a decade before Sajak’s 2024 retirement brought Seacrest in as host.
Sony hasn’t said what its investigation covers or when it ends. What’s confirmed right now is narrow: a passenger’s complaint, photos, a brief police stop that closed without charges, and a lawyer flatly disputing the story being told about her client.
