Josh Gerstein is POLITICO’s Senior Authorized Affairs Reporter.
Gerstein covers the intersection of legislation and politics, together with Particular Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of President Donald Trump and his associates, in addition to ensuing counter-investigations into the origins of the FBI’s preliminary inquiry into the Trump-Russia saga.
Whereas not a lawyer, Gerstein’s spent extra time in courtrooms and extra time studying authorized pleadings than many members of the bar.
For greater than a decade, he has taken POLITICO readers inside essentially the most celebrated political trials of our period, involving figures like former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), former White Home counsel Greg Craig, longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone and former Trump marketing campaign supervisor Paul Manafort.
Gerstein served as a contributor to MSNBC for a number of of these trials. As well as, his reporting and authorized evaluation has been featured in shops equivalent to Nationwide Public Radio, CNN, Fox Information Al Jazeera, the New York Instances and the New Republic.
Gerstein additionally reviews on the Justice Division and authorized controversies, together with Supreme Courtroom showdowns over same-sex marriage and Obamacare, all the latest Supreme Courtroom nominations, felony justice reform and battles over government privilege.
Simply earlier than President Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009, Gerstein joined POLITICO as a White Home reporter, returning to a beat he coated as a White Home correspondent for ABC Information. At ABC, he reported on President Invoice Clinton’s impeachment and President George W. Bush’s response to the terrorist assaults of Sept. 11, 2001.
Gerstein started his skilled profession at CNN’s investigative unit and later served for ABC as what’s now often known as an “embed” overlaying Sen. Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential marketing campaign. Years later, Gerstein turned the Beijing correspondent for ABC, reporting from the abandoned streets of China’s capital in the course of the SARS disaster, on threats to U.S. diplomats in Pakistan and from Afghanistan on the households of Guantanamo prisoners.
From 2003 to 2008, Gerstein was primarily based in northern California as a nationwide reporter for the New York Solar, overlaying such tales as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s unorthodox gubernatorial bid and the ins and outs of two presidential elections.
In 2019, Gerstein’s POLITICO Journal
report on a secret deal between the U.S. and Australia to resettle refugees who as soon as confronted a possible dying penalty for murdering vacationers was a finalist for “Scoop of the 12 months” in Australia’s most prestigious journalism awards, the Walkleys.
Gerstein attended Harvard Faculty and acquired a Bachelor’s diploma, magna cum laude, in authorities.
Evincing his lifelong curiosity in transparency and open authorities, Gerstein is the creator of a 1991 Massachusetts legislation requiring school and college police departments to maintain a public log of arrests and reported crimes.
He’s additionally an knowledgeable on the Freedom of Info Act and has pursued a number of such instances, in search of particulars about alleged abuse of detainees at Guantanamo and the federal government’s dealing with of leaks of labeled info.