Jesse Eisinger
Jesse Eisinger is a senior editor and reporter at ProPublica. 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.
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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.
The Bailout Is Working — for the Rich
The economy is in free fall but Wall Street is thriving, and stocks of big private equity firms are soaring dramatically higher. That tells you who investors think is the real beneficiary of the federal government’s massive rescue efforts.
Walmart Hid That It Was Under Criminal Investigation for Its Opioid Sales, Lawyers Say
States and counties suing the giant retailer over its drug sales accused it in court of failing to hand over huge quantities of documents — including about the criminal case — whose existence was revealed in a recent ProPublica investigation.
How the Coronavirus Bailout Repeats 2008’s Mistakes: Huge Corporate Payoffs With Little Accountability
As the government rushes to aid the economy, how that’s done, who benefits and who is left behind matter. So far, the signs are ominous.
Walmart Was Almost Charged Criminally Over Opioids. Trump Appointees Killed the Indictment.
Even as company pharmacists protested, Walmart kept filling suspicious prescriptions, stoking the country’s opioid epidemic. A Republican U.S. Attorney in Texas thought the evidence was damning. Trump’s political appointees? Not so much.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren Asks Why the Justice Department Went Easy on Big Banks
After an article by ProPublica and American Banker examining how the DOJ softened settlements with RBS and Barclays, the presidential candidate blasts settlements that let banks “evade accountability.”
How Trump’s Political Appointees Overruled Tougher Settlements With Big Banks
After talks with well-connected lawyers for Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland, senior Justice Department officials in Washington last year told career prosecutors who’d been investigating the banks’ misdeeds to settle for less than they wanted.
You Can’t Tax the Rich Without the IRS
Until the budget-starved agency is restored, corporations and the wealthy will easily fend off attempts to increase the rates they pay.
¿Qué personas tienen mayor probabilidad de ser sometidas a auditoría? ¿Alguien que gane $20 mil dólares o alguien que gane $400 mil?
Si usted reclama el crédito por ingreso del trabajo (Earned Income Tax Credit – EITC), cuyo beneficiario promedio gana menos de $20,000 dólares anuales, tiene una mayor probabilidad de enfrentarse a un escrutinio de parte del IRS comparado con alguien que gane veinte veces más. ¿Cómo es que un beneficio para los trabajadores pobres se ha estado ejecutando en contra de ellos?
The IRS Tried to Take on the Ultrawealthy. It Didn’t Go Well.
Ten years ago, the tax agency formed a special team to unravel the complex tax-lowering strategies of the nation’s wealthiest people. But with big money — and Congress — arrayed against the team, it never had a chance.
Senators Urge IRS to Focus on Big-Time Tax Cheats, Citing ProPublica Stories
Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and three fellow senators say the agency should do more to tackle financial crimes, even in the face of crippling budget cuts.