Vicky Ward

Last updated

Vicky Ward
Vicky-ward-author-photo.jpg
Ward in 2010
Born
Victoria Penelope Jane Ward

(1969-07-03) 3 July 1969 (age 54)
Chelmsford, England
CitizenshipUnited States
Alma mater Trinity Hall, Cambridge
Occupation(s) Investigative journalist
author
columnist
editor
commentator
EmployerCNN
Spouse
Matthew Doull
(m. 1995;div. 2010)
Children2

Victoria Penelope Jane Ward (born 3 July 1969) [1] is a British-born American author, investigative journalist, editor-at-large, and television commentator. She was a Senior Reporter at CNN and a former magazine and newspaper editor who has featured in The New York Times Best Seller list.

Contents

Early life and education

Vicky Ward was born Victoria Penelope Jane Ward on 3 July 1969 in Chelmsford, Essex. She is the daughter of Simon Charles Ward, a retired London financier, [2] and Myrtle Ward ( née  East), a graduate of Trinity College Dublin. [3] She has two younger sisters, Antonia Ward and Lucinda Ward. [3] Ward attended Benenden School from 1983 to 1987 and later earned a BA and MA in English literature from Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge during 1988–1991. [4] [5]

Career

Prior to moving to the U.S. in 1997, Ward was a columnist and feature writer for The Independent , a British newspaper. In New York City, she was the features and news features editor of the New York Post (1999–2001) and Tina Brown's executive editor at Talk (2000–2001).

Ward worked as a contributing editor to Vanity Fair (2001–2012) as well as a columnist for the London Evening Standard (2007–2011). Her Vanity Fair articles covered a wide array of subject matter: politics, finance, art, and culture and society. [6] Among other things, she wrote about Hewlett Packard, Morgan Stanley, Bruce Wasserstein, a failed coup in Africa, Kate Middleton, Valerie Plame, counter-terrorist czar Dick Clarke, Brooke Astor, Veronica Hearst, the Guggenheim, the Getty, Phillips de Pury Luxembourg, St. Barths, Vivendi, Jeffrey Epstein, Washington interns, the Fairfield Greenwich hedge fund and Bernie Madoff.

From July 2017 to July 2019, Ward served as editor-at-large for HuffPost and Huffington Post Highline, their long-form magazine. HuffPost exclusives written by Ward included interviews with Blackwater's Erik Prince, [7] Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen, [8] and Anthony Scaramucci on the White House and why he was fired. [9] For The Huffington Post Highline, Ward wrote articles about Vice President Mike Pence's Chief of Staff, Nick Ayers [10] and Robert and Rebekah Mercer's influence in the 2016 election. [11] Charlie Rose later interviewed her on this piece. [12]

In July 2019, Ward was named Senior Reporter at CNN. [13] For CNN, her reporting included pieces on the rise of the Jeffrey Epstein mystique, [14] the scrutiny of Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale's business ties, [15] and a look at Donald Trump's ongoing fight to keep his tax returns private. [16]

Ward is also editor-at-large at Town & Country magazine, where she writes about culture. Her pieces have included an article on the late, seminal Russian art collector Sergei Shchukin, [17] Frank Gehry's first-ever sailboat design, [18] and a $2 billion fraud in the modern art world including the Knoedler art trial. [19]

In 2016, Ward wrote investigative long-form articles for Esquire including a profile of the Russian-born cyber-terrorism expert Dmitri Alperovitch, and a piece on senior presidential aide Jared Kushner, [20] [21] about whom she later, in 2019, wrote a book.

Ward has contributed to, among others, the Financial Times , The New York Times , the London Times, Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph , the UK Spectator magazine, British Vogue, US Harper's Bazaar and Porter. She has also had on-air contracts with CNBC and Bloomberg TV. She appears regularly on MSNBC's Morning Joe.[ citation needed ]

Ward is the author of three books: the New York Times bestseller The Devil's Casino in 2010, [22] The Liar's Ball in 2014, and the New York Times bestseller Kushner, Inc.: Greed. Ambition. Corruption. in 2019. [23] Centering on the story of real estate developer Harry Macklowe, The Liar's Ball was reported to be in development as a feature film by J.C. Chandor and A24 Productions. [24]

Ward appeared in the 2017 documentary film Blurred Lines: Inside the Art World. [25]

In 2019, Ward said her 2003 profile of Jeffrey Epstein in Vanity Fair had included on-the-record accounts of Annie and Maria Farmer (who filed the earliest known criminal complaints about Epstein), but that they were later stricken from Ward's article after Epstein pressured the magazine's editor Graydon Carter. [26] [27] While researching Epstein, Ward was pregnant with twins and reported that she felt compelled to hire security protection for their neonatal intensive care unit after Epstein had threatened their wellbeing. [28] [29] [30]

In June 2020, she joined the Council on Foreign Relations [31] She is the host and producer of Chasing Ghislaine, which was released July 15, 2021 as an Audible Original podcast (and hit #5 on Audible's Weekly Bestsellers List) and as docuseries premiering on discovery+ on November 22, 2021 and ID on December 3, 2021. On November 29, 2021, she launched the Substack newsletter "Vicky Ward Investigates". She is the host and co-producer of the Audible Original podcast Pipeline to Power: The 40-Year Plan to Capture the Supreme Court. [32] 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. [33] In September 2023, she was appointed as a Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford. [34]

Bibliography

Personal life

Ward met Matthew Doull in the 1990s when both were working at The Daily Telegraph. [35] They have two children together, twins Orlando and Lorcán, born in early 2003. [36] Ward and Doull later divorced. Ward has lived in New York City since 1997, and is a naturalized U.S. citizen as of 2017. [5]

A portrait of Ward, taken by photographer Jason Bell, was exhibited in the British National Portrait Gallery in 2011 as part of Bell's series "An Englishman in New York". [37] The series, including the portrait of Ward, was also published as a book by the same title. [37]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Les Wexner</span> American businessman (born 1937)

Leslie Herbert Wexner is an American billionaire businessman, the co-founder and chairman emeritus of Bath & Body Works, Inc..

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Graydon Carter</span> Canadian-born American journalist

Edward Graydon Carter, CM is a Canadian journalist who served as the editor of Vanity Fair from 1992 until 2017. He also co-founded, with Kurt Andersen and Tom Phillips, the satirical monthly magazine Spy in 1986. In 2019, he co-launched a weekly newsletter with Alessandra Stanley called Air Mail, which is for "worldly cosmopolitans". His current net worth is 12 million dollars.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ivanka Trump</span> American businesswoman (born 1981)

Ivana Marie "Ivanka" Trump is an American businesswoman. She is the second child of Donald Trump and his first wife, Ivana. Trump was a senior advisor in his administration (2017–2021), and also was the director of the Office of Economic Initiatives and Entrepreneurship.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Lewis</span> American writer (born 1960)

Michael Monroe Lewis is an American author and financial journalist. He has also been a contributing editor to Vanity Fair since 2009, writing mostly on business, finance, and economics. He is known for his nonfiction work, particularly his coverage of financial crises and behavioral finance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alan Dershowitz</span> American lawyer and author (born 1938)

Alan Morton Dershowitz is an American lawyer and law professor known for his work in U.S. constitutional law and American criminal law. From 1964 to 2013, he taught at Harvard Law School, where he was appointed as the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law in 1993. Dershowitz is a regular media contributor, political commentator, and legal analyst.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jared Kushner</span> American businessman (born 1981)

Jared Corey Kushner is an American businessman, investor, and former government official. He is the son-in-law of former president Donald Trump through his marriage to Ivanka Trump, and served as a senior advisor to Trump from 2017 to 2021. He was also Director of the Office of American Innovation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeffrey Epstein</span> American sex offender and financier (1953–2019)

Jeffrey Edward Epstein was an American financier and sex offender. Born and raised in New York City, Epstein began his professional life as a teacher at the Dalton School despite lacking a college degree. After his dismissal from the school in 1976, he entered the banking and finance sector, working at Bear Stearns in various roles before starting his own firm. Epstein cultivated an elite social circle and procured many women and children whom he and his associates sexually abused.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Little Saint James, U.S. Virgin Islands</span> Private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands

Little Saint James is a small private island in the United States Virgin Islands, southeast of Saint Thomas. It was owned by American financier Jeffrey Epstein from 1998 until his death in 2019. During Epstein's ownership the island acquired the nickname Epstein Island.

Leon David Black is an American private equity investor. He is the former CEO of Apollo Global Management, which he co-founded in 1990 with Marc Rowan and Josh Harris. Black was the chairman of the Museum of Modern Art from 2018 to 2021.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alexander Acosta</span> American attorney and politician (born 1969)

Rene Alexander Acosta is an American attorney and politician, who served as the 27th United States Secretary of Labor from 2017 to 2019. President Donald Trump nominated Acosta to be Labor Secretary on February 16, 2017, and he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on April 27, 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steven Hoffenberg</span> American businessman and fraudster (1945–2022)

Steven Jude Hoffenberg was an American businessman and fraudster. He was the founder, CEO, president, and chairman of Towers Financial Corporation, a debt collection agency, which was later discovered to be a Ponzi scheme. In 1993, he rescued the New York Post from bankruptcy, and briefly owned the paper. Towers Financial collapsed in 1993, and in 1995 Hoffenberg pleaded guilty to bilking investors out of $475 million. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison, plus a $1 million fine and $463 million in restitution. The U.S. SEC considered his financial crimes to be "one of the largest Ponzi schemes in history".

Anna Malova is a Russian model and beauty pageant titleholder who was appointed as Miss Russia 1998 and competed at Miss Universe 1998 and placed Top 10.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ghislaine Maxwell</span> British sex trafficker and former socialite (born 1961)

Ghislaine Noelle Marion Maxwell is a British former socialite and convicted sex offender. In 2021, she was found guilty of child sex trafficking and other offences in connection with the deceased financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In June 2022, she was sentenced in a New York court to twenty years' imprisonment.

Thomas Joseph Barrack Jr. is an American private equity real estate investor and the founder and executive chairman of Colony Capital, a publicly traded real estate investment trust (REIT). Barrack has for decades been a close friend of and fundraiser for former U.S. President Donald Trump, representing him in television news appearances. He was senior advisor to Trump's presidential campaign and served as the chairman of his Inaugural Committee.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Donald Trump sexual misconduct allegations</span>

Donald Trump, the president of the United States from 2017 to 2021, has been accused of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment, including non-consensual kissing or groping, by at least 25 women since the 1970s. In June 2019, writer E. Jean Carroll alleged in New York magazine that Trump raped her in a department store dressing room in 1995 or 1996. Two friends of Carroll stated that Carroll had previously confided in them about the incident. Trump called the allegation fiction and denied ever meeting Carroll, despite a photo of them together from 1987 being published by the magazine. In November 2022, Carroll filed a suit against Trump for battery under the Adult Survivors Act. On May 9, 2023, a New York jury in a civil case found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation against Carroll, but found him not liable for rape. They awarded Carroll $5 million in damages. In July 2023, Judge Kaplan stated that the jury had actually found that Trump had raped Carroll according to the common definition of the word as they had ruled that Trump had forcibly and nonconsensually penetrated Carroll's vagina with his fingers. New York state's definition at the time defined rape as solely nonconsensual penetration of the vagina by a penis. A September 2023 partial summary judgment again found Trump liable for defaming Carroll. On January 26, 2024, Trump was ordered to pay Carroll an additional $83.3 million in damages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emily Jane Fox</span> American reporter and author

Emily Jane Fox is an American reporter for Vanity Fair online magazine The Hive and author of the 2018 book Born Trump: Inside America's First Family.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Herbert N. Straus House</span> House in New York City

The Herbert N. Straus House is a large town house at 9 East 71st Street, just east of Fifth Avenue, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. The exterior was designed by Horace Trumbauer, and completed in 1932. A roof extension was added in 1977. The size of the house was believed to be 21,000 square feet (2,000 m2) in the late 1980s, and by 2003 had been enlarged to 51,000 square feet (4,700 m2), spread over nine floors. A 15-foot high (4.6 m) oak door and large arched windows are distinctive features of the limestone exterior. A heated sidewalk is located in front of the house.

Virginia Louise Giuffre is an American-Australian campaigner who offers support to victims of sex trafficking. She is an alleged victim of the sex trafficking ring of Jeffrey Epstein. Giuffre created Victims Refuse Silence, a non-profit based in the United States, in 2015, which was relaunched under the name Speak Out, Act, Reclaim (SOAR) in November 2021. She has given a detailed account to many American and British reporters about her experiences of being trafficked by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

Maria K. Farmer is an American visual artist known for providing the first criminal complaint to law enforcement, to the New York City Police Department and to the FBI, in 1996 about the conduct of financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Farmer, a figurative painter, had described her and her sister Annie's experiences of sexual misconduct from Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell to a journalist at Vanity Fair in 2002 but the publication refrained from including it in their accounts.

Towers Financial Corporation was a debt collection agency based in Manhattan in New York City. Between 1988 and 1993, Towers Financial ran a Ponzi scheme that was the largest financial fraud in American history prior to Bernie Madoff's being uncovered.

References

  1. "Vicky Ward - National Portrait Gallery". npg.org.uk. Archived from the original on 21 June 2020. Retrieved 12 February 2020.
  2. Hampson, Sarah (19 April 2010). "Vicky Ward: Wall Street tattler". The Globe and Mail. Archived from the original on 11 November 2020. Retrieved 15 February 2020.
  3. 1 2 Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage: 107th Edition volume 1, page 1360
  4. "Vicky Ward Speaker, Keynote, Booking Agent, Bureau". Speakers.com. Archived from the original on 12 February 2020. Retrieved 12 February 2020.
  5. 1 2 "Vicky Ward - Senior Reporter". CNN Profiles. Archived from the original on 19 February 2020. Retrieved 14 February 2020.
  6. "Articles". Vicky Ward. Archived from the original on 31 March 2020. Retrieved 13 February 2020.
  7. Ward, Vicky (31 August 2017). "Blackwater's Erik Prince On How He Got Into The White House". HuffPost. Archived from the original on 15 February 2020. Retrieved 14 February 2020.
  8. "Michael Cohen Speaks: Trump Exec Admits Russia Dealings Were Gross, But Not Illegal". Vicky Ward. 30 August 2017. Archived from the original on 24 March 2019. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
  9. "Why The Mooch Lost His Cool". Vicky Ward. 1 August 2017. Archived from the original on 24 March 2019. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
  10. Ward, Vicky (15 March 2018). "Mike Pence's Man In The Swamp". Highline. HuffPost. Archived from the original on 5 April 2019. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
  11. "The Blow-It-All-Up Billionaires". Vicky Ward. 17 March 2017. Archived from the original on 24 March 2019. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
  12. "Vicky Ward", Charlie Rose, 17 March 2017, archived from the original on 24 March 2019, retrieved 7 January 2019
  13. Katz, A. J. (29 July 2019). "HuffPost Editor-at-Large Vicky Ward Is Joining CNN as Senior Reporter". TVNewser. Adweek. Retrieved 13 February 2020.
  14. Ward, Vicky (13 August 2019). "CNN Exclusive: The rise of the Jeffrey Epstein mystique". CNN. Archived from the original on 8 December 2019. Retrieved 13 February 2020.
  15. Ward, Vicky (30 August 2019). "Pro-Trump super PAC paid thousands to firm owned by Trump's campaign manager". CNN. Archived from the original on 5 October 2021. Retrieved 13 February 2020.
  16. Ward, Vicky (14 October 2019). "Trump wanted to release his taxes in 2013 to show how smart he was for paying so little". CNN. Archived from the original on 8 December 2020. Retrieved 3 November 2020.
  17. "How a Russian Collector Changed the Course of Modern Art". Vicky Ward. 9 September 2016. Archived from the original on 24 March 2019. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
  18. "Frank Gehry's First-Ever Yacht Looks Like Nothing You've Ever Seen". Vicky Ward. 5 October 2015. Archived from the original on 24 March 2019. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
  19. "Inside the Trial All the Billionaires Are Watching". Vicky Ward. 2 February 2016. Archived from the original on 24 March 2019. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
  20. Ward, Vicky (18 August 2016). "Jared Kushner's Second Act". Esquire. Archived from the original on 15 February 2020. Retrieved 14 February 2020.
  21. Ward, Vicky (24 October 2016). "The Russian Expat Leading the Fight to Protect America". Esquire. Archived from the original on 3 March 2020. Retrieved 14 February 2020.
  22. "The Devil's Casino". Vicky Ward. Archived from the original on 24 March 2019. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
  23. "Kushner, Inc". Vicky Ward. Archived from the original on 31 March 2019. Retrieved 8 April 2019.
  24. Busch, Anita (9 June 2015). "J.C. Chandor On Dance Card For A24's 'The Liar's Ball'". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on 24 March 2019. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
  25. "Vicky Ward". IMDb. Archived from the original on 19 June 2024. Retrieved 12 February 2020.
  26. Tracy, Marc (9 July 2019). "Ex-Vanity Fair Writer Says Editor Stopped Her From Exposing Epstein in '03". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331. Archived from the original on 13 February 2020. Retrieved 14 February 2020.
  27. Folkenflik, David (22 August 2019). "Why 'Vanity Fair' Story Left Out Abuse Allegations Against Epstein". NPR. Archived from the original on 30 November 2019. Retrieved 14 February 2020.
  28. Pilkington, Ed (13 July 2019). "Jeffrey Epstein: how US media – with one star exception – whitewashed the story". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077. Archived from the original on 19 June 2024. Retrieved 17 February 2020.
  29. "Jeffrey Epstein, a Billionaire Friend of Presidents Trump & Clinton, Arrested for Sex Trafficking". Democracy Now!. Archived from the original on 19 June 2024. Retrieved 17 February 2020.
  30. Ward, Vicky (7 January 2015). "I Tried to Warn You About Sleazy Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein in 2003". The Daily Beast. Archived from the original on 19 June 2024. Retrieved 17 February 2020.
  31. "Council on Foreign Relations". Council on Foreign Relations. Archived from the original on 19 April 2017. Retrieved 18 March 2021.
  32. "Pipeline to Power by Vicky Ward - Audiobook - Audible.com". Archived from the original on 11 October 2023. Retrieved 21 September 2023.
  33. "Novelist James Patterson, journalist Vicky Ward plan book on killing of Idaho college students". AP NEWS. 19 May 2023. Archived from the original on 25 May 2023. Retrieved 21 June 2023.
  34. "Visiting Fellows | Saïd Business School". www.sbs.ox.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 3 September 2023. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
  35. "Vicky Ward and Matthew Doull's wedding". Tatler. 1 October 1995. Archived from the original on 22 June 2020. Retrieved 14 February 2020.
  36. Ward, Vicky. "The Devil's Casino" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 June 2020. Retrieved 8 July 2019.
  37. 1 2 "An Englishman in New York". The Guardian. 14 August 2010. Archived from the original on 24 March 2019. Retrieved 14 February 2020.

Further reading

Appearances on C-SPAN