Biography
Jon is an award-winning political reporter and #1 New York Times bestselling author based in Washington, D.C. A senior national politics reporter with NBC News, he appears frequently on MSNBC and News Now.
Born in Silver Spring, Md., Jon attended St. Mary's College in Southern Maryland, where he played baseball, and graduated from the University of Maryland in 1998. He got his start in journalism as a copy editor and fill-in reporter with the Prince William Journal in Manassas, Va. He later moved to Congressional Quarterly, where he won the prestigious Everett McKinley Dirksen and Sandy Hume awards for his coverage of Congress.
In 2009, Jon was hired by Politico, where he wrote a newsletter about Congress - The Huddle - co-anchored the "Politico Live" morning television series and eventually became the outlet's White House bureau chief. Politico is also where he met his writing partner, Amie Parnes, who sat in the same cluster of desks with Jon and novelist Karin Tanabe.
In 2012, Jon and Amie signed a deal with Crown Publishing, a division of RandomHouse, to write a book about Hillary Clinton's tenure at the State Department. "HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton" was released to critical acclaim in 2014 and hit #6 on the New York Times bestseller list. The Los Angeles Times called the book "a character-driven psychodrama, chockablock with sweaty descriptions of its players," adding "it's no easy feat to wring page-turning narrative juice from four years of state craft, but Allen and Parnes have relied on 200 sources...to get them the gossipy goods."
That year, they inked a second deal to write a book about the 2016 presidential campaign. "Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign," won praise from critics and from prominent figures ranging from director Spike Lee to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. MIchiko Kakutani, then of the New York Times, wrote, "The blow-by-blow details in Shattered are nothing less than devastating" and Rolling Stone concluded "If the ending to this story were anything other than Donald Trump being elected president, Shattered would be an awesome comedy, like a Kafka novel-a lunatic bureaucracy devouring itself."
Shattered debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and remained on the list for eight weeks.
Their latest book, "Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency," was released in 2021. The Washington Post wrote that "blunt, insidery talk is the lifeblood of Lucky," calling it "a brisk and detailed account of the 2020 presidential race [with] memorable and telling insider moments."
In addition to his other posts, Jon has served as the Washington Bureau Chief for Bloomberg News, a political reporter for Vox, a columnist for Roll Call, head of community and content for Sidewire and executive director of DWS PAC. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Stephanie Allen, and their two children.
