When white supremacists march on an American city, Josh Margolin goes to work. When an angry mob tries to overtake the US Capitol, Josh Margolin goes to work. And when covid turned the lights off for so much of the nation and the world, Josh Margolin went to work.
As the Chief Investigative Reporter at ABC News, Josh helps lead the network’s coverage on a wide range of stories – from breaking news to law enforcement to politics. Based at the News Division’s world headquarters in New York, Josh produces, reports, researches, edits, writes and develops stories for every ABC News show as well as ABC News Radio and ABCNews.com. Since arriving at ABC News in 2013, Josh has played a key role in some of the network’s most provocative and groundbreaking reports. He led the reporting on American Catastrophe and The Shot, two full-length covid specials produced and aired as the pandemic raged in 2020.
Josh conceived and produced the groundbreaking 2020 documentary Homegrown Hate, which went through the deep unexplored history of violent extremism in America and how it connected to the presidency of Donald Trump. And he led the investigative component of Diane Sawyer’s highly rated and acclaimed 2021 special that explored the story of the 13 Turpin children who were tortured and held captive by their parents. In 2021, Josh was the executive producer of the five-part doc series 9/11 20 Years Later: The Longest Shadow, hosted by George Stephanopoulos, and he has led ABC News’ effort to investigate the failures of law enforcement during the 2022 mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
During his years at ABC News, Josh helped lead the team that investigated the “Bridgegate” scandal that doomed the presidential campaign of former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and he broke the news that members of Christie’s staff had been subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury, and that Christie himself had been interrogated by federal agents. Josh played a key role in ABC’s well-received coverage of the 2014 disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight 370. And he helped lead the network’s coverage of the domestic-violence scandal that engulfed the NFL through much of 2014 and 2015. In January 2014, Josh was the first to report that the FBI had finally made an arrest in the notorious “Lufthansa Heist,” the caper at the center of the mob-movie classic "Goodfellas." Throughout 2014 and 2015, Josh played a lead role in ABC’s coverage of policing in America, helping to coordinate the reporting on the cop stories that have come to define the era – from Ferguson, Mo., to New York City to Baltimore.
In early 2015, Josh helped produce David Muir’s groundbreaking piece that, for the first time, took outsiders into the NYPD’s program designed to retrain the biggest police force in the country. In June 2015, Josh broke the story that federal investigators were targeting the president of FIFA (the governing body for international soccer), a man widely viewed as the world’s most powerful sports figure. Josh was the first reporter to identify the prison worker at the center of the incredible escape of two killers from one of New York state’s most secure penitentiaries.
He was the editorial producer on the "20/20" special “Manhunt,” the authoritative story behind the June 2015 escape from that same prison, the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, and the efforts to capture and kill the murderers who busted out. A year later, Josh helped produce Diane Sawyer’s unprecedented look inside New York City’s notorious jail complex on Rikers Island, a project that required months of preparation and eight full days of unrestricted filming behind the bars and the walls.
Josh helped lead the network’s coverage of ISIS and the terror attacks that plagued both the United States and Western Europe in the last decade. He produced ABC’s special projects investigating the police response to both the Pulse shooting and the earlier massacre in San Bernardino, Calif. And, after more than a year of investigation, Josh helped produce Diane Sawyer’s hourlong program examining the nature of the seduction of ISIS and the radicalization crisis that plagued America for years.
Josh has been a member of the ABC News teams that have won four Emmy awards, along with a host of other honors, and he has been nominated 10 times for the Emmy.
Josh came to ABC News after nearly three years as the Senior Enterprise Reporter at the New York Post, where he specialized in covering politics and homeland security. In April 2013, Josh broke the story that federal agents were about to arrest some of New York City’s top politicians in a stunning scheme to rig the election for mayor. He also led The Post’s coverage of the ongoing effort to convict the men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks and reported extensively from the US military compound at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Before joining The Post, Josh spent 12 years on the staff at The Star-Ledger, New Jersey’s largest and oldest newspaper. During his tenure at The Ledger, Josh broke some of the biggest stories ever covered by the newspaper and, in 2004, he led the team that won a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage for its reporting on the resignation of then-New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey. Josh is the co-author of The Jersey Sting, a critically acclaimed national bestseller that tells the inside story behind of the biggest political-corruption probes in American history.
Josh graduated from Long Island University’s CW Post Campus in 1992 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. Since then, Josh has worked as a professional journalist covering a wide range of beats and stories for news organizations around the country, in places as diverse as Texas, New York, New Mexico and New Jersey. He was named one of New Jersey’s 101 most influential people by New Jersey Monthly and the most influential journalist in the Garden State by PolitickerNJ.com. “The Fix” of Washingtonpost.com named Josh one of the best political reporters in the country. He has long been a regular contributor to television and radio news programs and has served as a story and plot consultant for the hit CBS series “The Good Wife.”
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