About

Leila Barghouty is an award-winning investigative journalist and writer specializing in high-volume FOIA and public records investigations into law enforcement, military, detention, and the long-term effects of armed conflict around the world. She’s produced feature documentaries, series, and podcasts for several major U.S. networks, and writes for both print and screen. She is currently on assignment with the visual forensics team at The Washington Post, and is an investigative fellow at the Center for Media Innovation at Point Park University, focusing on the use of less-lethal weapons and chemical agents by law enforcement. She is a juris doctor candidate for 2026 at Syracuse with an intended course focus on constitutional and national security law, and a graduate of Stanford University and the University of Michigan.

She has reported from the Ukraine-Poland border on combat injuries, the war court in Guantanamo Bay on the CIA’s alleged torture program, from Iraq on the aftermath of airstrikes against the Islamic State, and from refugee camps in the EU at the height of the Syrian refugee crisis.

She drafted and negotiated over 1,400 freedom of information requests on police misconduct and use-of-force with the California Reporting Project and hundreds more with other police watchdog projects at Stanford University. Her public records investigations into policing in the U.S. have prompted procedural change in departments across the country.

Leila is a recipient of an IWMF reporting grant, The Transatlantic Media Fellowship, the Kathryn Davis Fellowship for Peace, the inaugural PERIPLUS Collective Fellowship, and has worked on several Emmy Award winning and nominated series and films. She is an active member of the Writers Guild of America, East.

RECENT WORK

The Washington Post: As war rages on in Ukraine, volunteer paramedics evacuate the injured

The Washington Post: How the St. Javelin meme raised a million dollars for Ukraine