Michelle R. Smith is a reporter for the Associated Press. She is currently a correspondent on the AP’s Global Investigations team.

Michelle was correspondent and narrator for a PBS FRONTLINE documentary based on her AP reporting on former national security advisor Michael Flynn and the Christian nationalist movement he is building. “Michael Flynn’s Holy War” was selected in 2023 for a Peabody Award and a Scripps Howard Award. The Peabody judges praised the team’s dogged reporting and “willingness to shine a bright light on religious extremism and its intersection with current politics.”

In collaboration with a team of reporters from KHN, she examined the nation’s public health system in an award-winning series, Underfunded and Under Threat. The work highlighted the many challenges to the nation’s public health system during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the chronic lack of funding, how politics was slowing pandemic aid, and how threats were pushing staff out of the field and jeopardizing the entire system.

With her colleagues, Michelle has uncovered how anti-vaccine activists exploited the pandemic to make millions. She revealed how Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has capitalized on the pandemic to turn his anti-vaccine nonprofit group into a juggernaut.

Her profiles and investigations of candidates for offices ranging from the U.S. Supreme Court to U.S. president have broken news and informed the public about their backgrounds and records.

Michelle has two decades of experience covering breaking news and writing about topics of national and international significance.

She calls Providence, Rhode Island, home.