Jesse Eisinger

Senior Editor and Reporter

Photo of Jesse Eisinger

Jesse Eisinger is a senior editor and reporter at ProPublica. He is the author of the “The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives.”

In April 2011, he and a colleague won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for a series of stories on questionable Wall Street practices that helped make the financial crisis the worst since the Great Depression. He was the lead reporter on the “Secret IRS Files” series that exposed the tax avoidance strategies of the ultrawealthy. The series won several prizes, including the Selden Ring in 2022. He also won the 2015 Gerald Loeb Award for commentary.

He was the editor on the “Friends of the Court” series, which revealed how a small group of politically influential billionaires wooed justices with lavish gifts and travel; it won the Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2024.

He serves on the advisory board of the University of California, Berkeley’s Financial Fraud Institute. And he was a consultant on season 3 of the HBO series “Succession.”

His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, NewYorker.com, The Washington Post, The Baffler and The American Prospect and on NPR and “This American Life.” Before joining ProPublica, he was the Wall Street editor of Conde Nast Portfolio and a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, covering markets and finance.

He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, the journalist Sarah Ellison, and their daughters.

Nice Little Agency You Got There

Does Valeant’s Cost-Cutting Go Too Far?

BlackRock Doesn’t Need A Scarlet Letter

The S.E.C. has a point on asset managers but it is undermining financial regulation with its public and needless antagonism of the Financial Stability Oversight Council.

The Buck Stops With Obama on Tepid Financial Reform

A new book by former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner shows the reluctance to push for serious change in the financial system after the 2008 meltdown can be traced to the very top.

The Rise of Corporate Impunity

Meet the only Wall St. executive prosecuted as a result of the financial crisis. Has justice been served?

Long After Sandy, Red Cross Post-Storm Spending Still a Black Box

Donors gave $312 million after the storm, but it’s not clear how exactly the money was spent.

SEC Issues More Fines Over Magnetar Deals – and Appears to Move on

There have now been more than $435 million in SEC settlements regarding one of the most notorious groups of mortgage securities deals behind the financial crisis.

The Problem Is Bigger Than Too Big to Fail

Obama’s Mystery Man for Derivatives

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