Emma Brown named deputy editor of the rapid-response investigations team at The Washington Post

Investigations Editor Peter Wallsten and Deputy Investigations Editor Eric Rich of The Washington Post made the following announcement today about Emma Brown being named deputy editor of the rapid-response investigations team at The Post:

Emma, who has been filling in as interim deputy editor since January, has already distinguished herself as a thoughtful leader with incisive judgment and a steady hand. In shepherding a reconstruction of Ted Leonsis’s decision to move the Washington Wizards and the Capitals to Northern Virginia, Emma guided a team of reporters from Investigations, Sports and Local to produce a gripping, behind-the-scenes narrative account of months of secret negotiations among some of the most powerful figures in the D.C. area.

Emma joined the rapid-response team as a reporter in 2017. The following year, she was the first to report Christine Blasey Ford’s sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, who was then in the final days of what had been an uneventful confirmation process as a Supreme Court nominee. In 2021, Emma was a key player in “41 minutes of fear,” a video investigation that was in the package of stories about the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol that won the Pulitzer for Public Service. In 2022, she was the lead reporter on stories revealing that Trump allies had accessed voting machines in Coffee County, Ga., an effort that later became central to the Fulton County indictment of the former president and his allies.

Last year, she and other members of the rapid-response team revealed that a judicial activist had arranged for payments to be made to the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas – famously specifying in one communication that there be “no mention of Ginni” in the paperwork.