Samuel Oakford

New York

Video Forensics Reporter

Education: Binghamton University, BA in Geography

Samuel Oakford is a video reporter for The Washington Post's Visual Forensics team. Before joining The Post, he worked as a senior journalist at Storyful and a reporter for Vice News at the United Nations. He was also a reporter for the civilian harm monitor Airwars and conducted open source investigations for Bellingcat's Yemen Project.
Latest from Samuel Oakford

The decisions that cost some lives and saved others during Helene’s wrath

Victims and survivors filmed Helene’s flooding in Tennessee, showing what went wrong as a hospital was evacuated and six people were swept away at a nearby factory.

November 27, 2024

Mar-a-Lago returns to the center of the political universe

Donald Trump’s Palm Beach club is home to his presidential transition, attracting long-shot job seekers and serious contenders for top administration positions.

November 15, 2024
Mar-a-Lago has reemerged as an unorthodox center of political power.

CIA official Asif Rahman arrested in leak of secret files on Israel

Asif Rahman, a CIA official, was arrested in Cambodia and charged with two counts of violating the Espionage Act for leaking secret intelligence documents on Israel.

November 13, 2024
The CIA seal in the lobby of the agency's headquarters in McLean, Virginia.

Would-be mail-in voters in key Pennsylvania county can go in person, judge says

A judge’s order would apply to at least 14,000 in the crucial swing county of Erie, Pennsylvania, who say they never got their requested mail-in ballots. Both major parties hailed the move.

November 2, 2024
Mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania on Oct. 30.

How a conspiracy-fueled group got a foothold in this hurricane-battered town

Over the course of 11 days, a supermarket parking lot became a snapshot of the chaos that can unfold in some corners of post-disaster America.

October 23, 2024
A search-and-rescue team hikes along North Carolina Route 9 on Oct. 1 near a Lake Lure police vehicle in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

Man arrested for threatening FEMA workers speaks out

William Jacob Parsons, 44, defended his alleged actions at a Federal Emergency Management Agency site in storm-battered Lake Lure, N.C.

October 16, 2024
William Jacob Parsons, 44, of Bostic, N.C., in a jail booking photo after he was arrested and charged with “Going Armed to the Terror of the Public.”

Ukraine, powered by Western arms, stuns Russia in cross-border assault

A surprise Ukrainian attack into Russia’s Kursk region appeared to use Western-donated fighting vehicles. The U.S. offered no objections to the operation.

August 8, 2024
This photo released by the acting governor of the Kursk region Alexei Smirnov's Telegram channel shows a house damaged after shelling by the Ukrainian side in the city of Sudzha in Russia's Kursk region that borders Ukraine.

‘We lost sight of him’: Radio traffic shows failed search for Trump rally shooter

A disjointed communications system on the day of the rally hampered the Secret Service’s ability to grasp the threat in real time, a Post examination found.

August 3, 2024

Trump rally gunman stopped firing after local officer shot at him

Thomas Matthew Crooks temporarily recoiled from his rooftop perch and did not shoot again before he was killed by a Secret Service countersniper.

July 30, 2024

Va. health staff failed Irvo Otieno as he suffocated, experts say

A new analysis of surveillance footage identified apparent lapses in the response by Central State clinical staff.

July 26, 2024