Jake Tapper

CNN anchor and chief Washington correspondent Jake Tapper joined the network in January 2013. His one-hour weekday program The Lead with Jake Tapper debuted in March 2013. Tapper joined CNN from ABC News, where he most recently served as senior White House correspondent, a position he was named to immediately following the 2008 presidential election. In his more than nine years at ABC News, Tapper covered a wide range of stories, visiting remote corners of Afghanistan, covering the war in Iraq from Baghdad, and spending time in New Orleans to cover the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the failure of the levee system. Prior to joining ABC News, Tapper served as Washington correspondent, then national correspondent, for Salon.com. He began his journalism career at the Washington City Paper and his reporting has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and The Weekly Standard, among others. He has drawn caricatures and illustrations for the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, and his comic strip, "Capitol Hell," appeared in Roll Call from 1994 to 2003. In 2001, he hosted the CNN show Take 5, a weekend program that featured young journalists talking about politics and pop culture. Tapper is the author of three books, including The Outpost, Down and Dirty: The Plot to Steal the Presidency, which was published in 2001, and Body Slam: The Jesse Ventura Story, which was published in 1999. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude from Dartmouth College in 1991 and lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, daughter, son, and two dogs.