Jay O’Brien is a Washington, D.C.-based correspondent for ABC News.
O’Brien is an Emmy® Award-winning journalist covering Capitol Hill since 2022, focusing on bringing politics to the viewers, live as it happens, and pushing stories forward through interviews and context.
Recently, O’Brien followed the 2024 presidential campaign. He participated in ABC’s coverage of the presidential debate and campaign rallies, as well as reporting from the floor of both the Republican and Democratic conventions.
O’Brien began covering Congress during Kevin McCarthy’s 15-round speaker battle. With a combined 20 hours of live coverage on ABC News Live, he explained the dramatic process to viewers as it played out. O’Brien later walked ABC audiences through the 22-day House speaker election process after McCarthy’s historic ouster. Separately, he conducted the first network interview with the NRA in nearly a decade, as well as covering the Baltimore bridge collapse and a months-long investigation into America’s reading crisis.
In the years after the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, O’Brien spearheaded a multiple-part investigation, confronting convicted capitol rioters, the founder of the oath keepers, lawmakers and more for the Disney+, Hulu and ABC News Live special “January 6th: The Fight to Rewrite History.”
Prior to joining ABC News, O’Brien won two regional Emmy Awards, working at WPEC in West Palm Beach, Florida, and KAGS Bryan-College Station, Texas.