Vicky Ward is a New York Times bestselling author, podcaster, documentary host and producer, former CNN Senior Reporter, magazine editor at large, entrepreneur, and Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford. She uses multi-media to deliver investigative reporting with a specialty in power, money, and corruption in the United States and abroad.
She is the author of the bestselling Substack newsletter, “Vicky Ward Investigates.”
She is at work on a book about the 2022 killing of four University of Idaho students, co-authored with the best-selling novelist James Patterson (Little, Brown and Company).
She is the host and co-producer of the Audible Original podcast Pipeline to Power: The 40-Year Plan to Capture the Supreme Court.
She is the host and co-producer of the docu-series Chasing Ghislaine, an explosive investigative series about Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell that premiered on discovery+ in 2021 and was executive produced by bestselling author James Patterson.
Chasing Ghislaine is also available as an Audible Original podcast which has been nominated for LIMITED SERIES & SPECIALS: Best Exclusive Content + Experiences in the Signal Awards.
She was a producer on the 2022 discovery+ docu-series Murdaugh Murders: Deadly Dynasty.
“Every time I write a book or an article I feel pulled into a culture that is both foreign and completely fascinating.” VICKY WARD
Her most recent book—Kushner, Inc.: Greed. Power. Corruption. The Extraordinary Story of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump (St. Martin’s Press, 2019)—was an instant New York Times bestseller. The book reports on Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, investigating the couple’s international behind-the-scenes business dealings—allegedly done without knowledge of the U.S. State Department or National Security Council. Former senior Trump administration officials claim that this added up to a dangerous brand of “diplomacy in the dark” which has caused havoc all over the world and threatens the democracy of the United States. The book was the first to examine closely Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, and it was covered widely in the media on television, radio, podcasts, print, and online including CNN, MSNBC, ABC, FOX, C-SPAN, NPR, CBC, Sirius XM, New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, Guardian, Newsweek, Daily Beast, Slate, The Atlantic, New York Magazine, Vanity Fair, Politico, USA TODAY, Harper’s Bazaar, Axios, The New Republic, and more.
Her 2014 book, The Liar’s Ball: The Extraordinary Saga of How one Building Broke the World’s Toughest Tycoons (Wiley), is being developed as a possible feature film.
Her 2010 book, The Devil’s Casino: Friendship, Betrayal and the High Stakes Games Played Inside Lehman Brothers (Wiley), is a New York Times bestseller.
In June 2020, she joined the Council on Foreign Relations.
From July 2019 to July 2020, Vicky was a Senior Reporter at CNN. For CNN, she reported on the ousting of U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, the threat of retaliation for the strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, scrutiny of financial dealings between a pro-Trump super PAC and a firm owned by Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, and more. She also covered the Ukraine scandal extensively, investigating in particular the ties between Donald Trump and Giuliani associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. She published multiple exclusives, including reporting on Parnas’s claim that he was on a “secret mission” for Trump in Ukraine.
As an investigative journalist, Vicky has covered a wide variety of topics, frequently delving into the trials and tribulations of Trump’s presidency. She wrote for The Guardian about Jared Kushner’s questionable private communications and suspicious financial dealings. She wrote for The Daily Beast about her 2003 Vanity Fair profile of Jeffrey Epstein and her early discovery of allegations of his attempted seduction of under-age girls as well as how Epstein’s story played out for years in plain sight.
Vicky is also Editor at large at Town & Country magazine, where her pieces have included the four-star scandal that ended the career of General David Petraeus.
In July 2017, Vicky was appointed Editor at large for HuffPost and Huffington Post Highline, their long-form magazine. For the Huffington Post Highline, Vicky wrote about Robert and Rebekah Mercer’s influence in the 2016 election. Charlie Rose later interviewed her about this piece. In March 2018, she wrote a deep-dive about political dark money centered around Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, Nick Ayers. HuffPost exclusives have included interviews with Blackwater’s Erik Prince, Trump attorney Michael Cohen,and Anthony Scaramucci on his tenure in the White House and why he was fired.
In her role at Esquire, Vicky wrote investigative long-form articles including a piece in October 2016 on Jared Kushner—one of the first in-depth profiles of the then-soon-to-be First Son-in-Law. She also profiled the Russian-born cyber-terrorism expert Dmitri Alperovitch and covered attempts to hack the 2016 election.
From 2001 to 2012, she was a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, where her articles covered a wide array of subject matter, from politics to finance to society. Among other things, she wrote about a failed coup in Africa, the outing of Valerie Plame, counterterrorist czar Dick Clarke, Bernie Madoff and the Fairfield Greenwich hedge fund, financial turmoil at Morgan Stanley, the Getty Museum, and Jeffrey Epstein.
In addition to writing, she was also an articles editor her first year at Vanity Fair (2001-2002); she was Tina Brown’s executive editor at Talk (2000-2001), and she was the Features and News Features Editor of the New York Post (1999-2001).
She was a columnist for the London Evening Standard (2007-2011). She has contributed to, among others, The Financial Times, The Guardian, the New York Times, The London Times and Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph, the UK Spectator Magazine, British Vogue, US Harper’s Bazaar, and Porter.
Vicky has been an in-demand guest for television, radio, and podcasts. She has appeared on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Primetime with Chris Cuomo, AC360, This Week With George Stephanopoulos, Morning Joe, The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, The Beat with Ari Melber, CNN Tonight with Don Lemon, Democracy Now, The 11th Hour with Brian Williams, All In With Chris Hayes, AM Joy with Joy Reid, MSNBC Live with Stephanie Ruhle, Deadline Whitehouse with Nicole Wallace, Weekends with Alex Witt, FOX Business, Piers Morgan Tonight, Inside Edition, C-Span’s Book TV, NPR’s 1A, The Young Turks, CBC Radio, BBC Radio, the Brian Lehrer Show, the Leonard Lopate Show, Slate’s Trumpcast, and more. She was featured in Netflix’s “Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich,” and she has had on-air contracts with CNN, CNBC, and Bloomberg TV.
Before to moving to the U.S., Vicky was a columnist and feature writer for Britain’s Independent Newspaper.
She is a graduate of Cambridge University in the UK, where aged 24 she was awarded runner-up for the Catherine Pakenham award, Britain’s most prestigious prize for longform writing by women under the age of 25.
In June 2020, she joined the Council on Foreign Relations.
She is presently at work on her fourth book.