Sarah Lynch

About Sarah Lynch

Sarah N. Lynch is the senior Justice Department reporter at CBS News in Washington.She previous worked for 15 years at Reuters where she covered the U.S. Justice Department and criminal justice policy out of Washington, D.C. During her time on the beat, she has covered everything from the Mueller report and the use of federal agents to quell protesters in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, to the rampant spread of COVID-19 in prisons. As part of her beat, she has chronicled the Justice Department’s efforts to prosecute the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, in a failed bid to keep then-President Donald Trump in office. This included covering the seditious conspiracy trials for the leaders of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.She also led Reuters’ coverage of the unprecedented federal indictments of former President Donald Trump brought by Special Counsel Jack SmithAfter Trump won reelection in 2024, she documented the seismic changes at the DOJ, from the dismantling of the Public Integrity Section, to the unraveling of the traditional missions of the Civil Rights Division along with the exodus of 75% of its staff.She previously covered Wall Street regulation and white collar crime for Reuters and for the Wall Street Journal’s newswire service. During her time at the Wall Street Journal, Sarah wrote stories about how the over-the-counter derivatives market contributed to the 2008 financial collapse. She also wrote about bank bailouts from the Treasury Department’s press room, covered the halls of Congress as lawmakers wrote and passed the Dodd-Frank Act, and chronicled the extensive reforms launched at the Securities and Exchange Commission after its historic failure to detect the largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history. Sarah started her career in the trenches of local newspapers in New Jersey and Arizona. She has a Master’s Degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism where she studied at the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism, and a Bachelor’s Degree from Barnard College.

Experience

1. Senior Justice Department Reporter

   Cbs News

   Jan 2026 — Present · Washington, DC, US

Education

• Columbia University - Graduate School of Journalism

  Master of Science (M.S.), Journalism (investigative reporting and newspaper concentrations)

  2007 — 2008

• Barnard College

  Bachelor's degree, English and Spanish with a concentration in writing