Background and career
Jonathan David Karl (born January 19, 1968) is an American political journalist and author. Karl has covered the White House, Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, and the U.S. State Department, and has reported from more than 30 countries, covering U.S. politics, foreign policy, and the military. Karl has been the chief Washington correspondent for ABC News and co-anchor of This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Karl served as the chief White House correspondent for ABC News from December 2012 through the end of the first Trump administration in January 2021. He is the author of the 2020 book Front Row at the Trump Show and the 2021 book Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show. Both books are New York Times bestsellers. His latest books, Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party (2023) and Retribution: Donald Trump and the Campaign That Changed America (2025), cover Donald Trump's return to the presidency.
Karl spent time growing up in both Connecticut and South Dakota, one of four sons of Wayne Frederick Karl and Audrey Karl (later Shaff). His father ran Karl's Autobody in Stamford, Connecticut, founded by his own father, James, in 1925. He has brothers Allan, James, and Robert. He graduated from Darien High School in Darien, Connecticut. While living in a Hill City, South Dakota, motel, his mother and stepfather did an oral history project for the University of South Dakota, interviewing the men who worked to create Mount Rushmore. Karl later credited that project for sparking his interest in journalism. Karl graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar College in 1990, where he was the editor-in-chief of the Vassar Spectator. He married Maria Nova Catalano in 1991 in Ridgewood, New Jersey.
Karl began his career as a researcher and reporter for The New Republic. In 1994, he became a reporter at the New York Post, where he covered New York City Hall. He first interviewed Donald Trump in 1994 for a New York Post article about Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley's honeymoon at Trump Tower. In 1996, he was hired to cover politics as a Generation X reporter at CNN and went on to become the network's congressional correspondent. He joined ABC News in January 2003 as the senior foreign affairs correspondent covering the State Department. Karl worked for ABC News covering national political news, becoming the senior national security correspondent in December 2005. In 2006, he earned an Emmy Award nomination for his coverage of the genocide in Darfur, Sudan. Karl was named chief White House correspondent for ABC News in December 2012 and held that position through the end of the Trump administration in January 2021. He is currently ABC News' chief Washington correspondent and co-anchor of This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Karl's writings have been published in The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, among other publications. Although Karl is an ABC News correspondent, he has often appeared on MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News in his capacity as an author.
In May 2013, Karl wrote an article about the reaction of Barack Obama's administration to the 2012 Benghazi attack in which he claimed to quote directly from an email sent by a White House advisor. It was later revealed that the quote was inaccurately given to Karl by an unnamed source, and that he himself had never seen the email. Karl apologized for the error and for not having stated that the quote was from a summary his source had provided, rather than a direct quote from the email.
Karl is the author of the 1995 book The Right to Bear Arms: The Rise of America's New Militias.
In March 2020, his book Front Row at the Trump Show, written before the COVID-19 pandemic, was released. It debuted at number 3 on the April 19, 2020, New York Times Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction best seller list and spent 5 weeks in the top 15. The book was released in paperback with a new afterword in March 2021 and hit number 6 on the New York Times Paperback Nonfiction best seller list. The New York Times review called it an account chronicling the first three years of Trump's presidency. "The book feels weightiest toward its end, when Karl addresses 'the president’s incessant telling of untruths' and Trump's dangerous relationship with the press. Unspooling a distressing private Oval Office meeting with the president on the matter, he concludes, 'I fear President Trump's war on truth may do lasting damage to American democracy.'" The Washington Post review calls the book "chiefly a compilation of his encounters and interviews with Trump and members of his staff" with "far too much recounting, often in somewhat tedious detail, of Karl’s daily coverage of Trump." According to the reviewer, the account "lacks analysis of the larger issues Trump and his presidency represent," while acknowledging in the epilogue "that Trump is 'motivated only by an insatiable desire to promote himself, but his assault on truth is toxic and contagious.'" A review in The Guardian states that the "well-organized and respectfully written" book "conveys the chaos and the characters that inhabit the president’s universe," including "his preternatural disregard for the truth—'Trump was a serial exaggerator long before he ran for president'—and his curious soft spot for the Confederacy."
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
