Her first reporting job was in 1989 at The Philadelphia Inquirer.[2] She later became a staff writer for The Charlotte Observer, where she first reported on city government, later covering the state legislature and eventually became the paper's Washington correspondent.
During her time at The Observer, she was a lead reporter on several investigative projects, including one involving Bank of America's use of federal funds to raze low-income housing near its corporate headquarters and another uncovering that Gov. Jim Hunt personally directed state funds to be used to build a major bridge in his rural hometown. Hunt apologized and canceled the project after the story about his involvement was published.[3]
The Washington Post
At The Washington Post, Leonnig first covered the District of Columbia city government and its problems with corruption, and then spent five years covering the federal courts in Washington. She reported on the Bush administration and issues surrounding the indefinitely imprisoned detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Leonnig writes for the Post's National Desk as part of a team that investigates public officials, federal agencies, and government accountability.
In 2011, Leonnig and her Post colleague Joe Stephens revealed in a series of stories how the Obama administration pressed to approve a $535 million federal loan to Solyndra, a solar panel manufacturer whose leading investors were tied to a major Obama fundraiser. Their stories documented how White House aides for the senior-most White House advisers pressured Office of Management and Budget officials to make a decision on approving the Solyndra loan in time for a press conference they had tentatively scheduled for the Vice President to announce the funding. The company was one President Obama himself touted in a visit in 2010, shortly after independent auditors raised concerns about Solyndra's financial stability.[9]
In 2015, Leonnig won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting "for her smart, persistent coverage of the Secret Service, its security lapses and the ways in which the agency neglected its vital task: the protection of the President of the United States."[11]
The Washington Post received the 2014Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for its coverage of the National Security Agency's expanded surveillance of everyday Americans based on former NSA contractor Edward Snowden's disclosures. Leonnig was part of the reporting team whose six months of revelatory work exposed the government's secret collection of records for all Americans' phone calls and electronic communications. The team also uncovered how a secret court had authorized much of the communication collection under secret law. Despite President Obama's claims that the court provided a key check on the NSA's spying power, The Post team revealed how the court's top judges had belatedly learned that the NSA had been violating the court's rules to protect innocent individuals' privacy for years—in fact, from the day the surveillance programs began. The court's chief judge later acknowledged to the Post it had no way to check the NSA's claims that it was properly safeguarding privacy.[12]
