Matt Gutman, a longtime ABC News correspondent based in Los Angeles, is leaving the network for a high profile role at CBS News.

Gutman will be the first significant on-air hire by Bari Weiss, who was named editor in chief of CBS News in October, according to people briefed on the matter who were not authorized to comment publicly. Gutman did not respond to a request for comment.

While there has been speculation Gutman is being considered for the anchor job at “CBS Evening News,” he is said to be joining the network as a correspondent. CBS has yet to name a replacement for the evening news anchor desk following the planned departures of John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois later this month.

Gutman’s contract was up at ABC News, which did not counter the offer from CBS, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Gutman joined ABC News in 2008 as a radio correspondent. He has been chief national correspondent on the TV side since 2018. He began his career at the Jerusalem Post, covering the West Bank.

Gutman won journalism awards for his work on the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas and the 2018 rescue mission of 12 boys and their soccer coach from a flooded cave in Thailand. He also reported extensively from Israel for 18 months after Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7, 2023, and covered the devastating Los Angeles wildfires in January.

Gutman was suspended by ABC in early 2020 after he erroneously reported on-air that all four of Kobe Bryant’s daughters were on board the helicopter that crashed and killed the NBA icon and eight others. Bryant’s 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, died in the accident in Calabasas. The others were not aboard.

Gutman apologized for the error and later attributed the mistake to a panic attack that occurred while on air. He wrote a book in 2023 about getting over his long struggle with anxiety and panic attacks.

Gutman recently faced criticism for his coverage of the investigation into the shooting death of right wing activist Charlie Kirk. In an ABC News report, Gutman read the texts between the alleged shooter Tyler Robinson and his transgender roommate, describing the messages as “very touching in a way we did not expect.”

Harsh social media reaction to the comments prompted Gutman to apologize. “Yesterday I tried to underscore the jarring contrast between this cold blooded assassination of Charlie Kirk — a man who dedicated his life to public dialogue — and the personal, disturbing texts read aloud by the Utah County Attorney at the press conference. I deeply regret that my words did not make that clear.”

Former President Joe Biden, when he served as a Delaware senator, railed against foreign narco-terrorists flooding the U.S. with highly addictive substances, calling for an “international strike force” against the drug traffickers in a fiery 1989 speech. 

“Let’s go after the drug lords where they live with an international strike force. There must be no safe haven for these narco-terrorists and they must know it,” then-Sen. Biden said in an 1989 video speech addressing then-President George H.W. Bush’s efforts to combat the narcotics flooding U.S. streets. 

The remarks have resurfaced on social media as the Trump administration currently faces outrage from Democrats over its strikes on suspected drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean. 

Biden’s address was billed as the Democrat Party’s official response to then-President H.W. Bush’s Sept. 5, 1989, address on his administration’s efforts to tackle the crack cocaine epidemic and rampant use of cocaine, C-SPAN footage reported. Bush had announced that the administration would double federal assistance to state and local law enforcement to tackle the drug problem, $65 million emergency assistance to nations such as Colombia to “fight against the cocaine cartels,” an overall $1.5 billion increase in drug-related federal spending on law enforcement and other initiatives. 

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Biden, in the Democrat Party’s response, called for “another D-Day” to end the war on drugs. 

“The president says he wants to wage a war on drugs, but if that’s true, what we need is another D-Day, not another Vietnam, not another limited war fought on the cheap and destined for stalemate and human tragedy,” Biden said in his response. 

Biden railed that the H.W. Bush administration was failing to take stronger actions on drugs at a time when cocaine from Colombia flooded the nation and U.S. cities were rocked by the crack epidemic that persisted through the 1980s and early 1990s, when crystal meth and heroin became the drugs of choice. 

“We speak with great concern about the drug problem in America today, but we fail to appreciate or address it for what it really is, the number one threat to our national security,” Biden said during his 1989 address on the war on drugs. “It affects the readiness of our army, the productivity of our workers and the achievement of our students and the very health and safety of our families.”

“America is under attack, literally under attack by an enemy who is well financed, well supplied and well armed and fully capable of declaring total war against a nation and its people, as we’ve seen in Colombia. Here in America, the enemy is already ashore, and for the first time, we are fighting and losing the war on our own soil,” Biden continued before arguing the U.S. should “go after the drug lords where they live.”

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Fox News Digital reached out to Biden’s office Friday inquiring if he stands by his 1989 address or has any additional comment to include, but did not immediately receive a response. 

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has come under fire for carrying out a series of military strikes on boats suspected of trafficking narcotics from Venezuela in the waters off of Central and South America. The administration has carried out at least 22 fatal strikes on the boats since September, killing dozens of suspected drug traffickers. 

The administration has defended the strikes, saying the U.S. is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels after the groups evolved into transnational terror organizations.

Trump has said the strikes are part of an effort to curb drugs flooding into the U.S., while experts have weighed in that the pressure on Venezuela is likely also to force Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s ouster and end his regime in the country. 

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Democrats have taken issue with a pair of strikes on Sept. 2 against an alleged drug boat from Venezuela. The White House confirmed the military carried out an initial strike on the boat before firing off a second that killed two suspected traffickers, sparking Democrats to claim the administration committed potential war crimes. 

“If the reports are true, Pete Hegseth likely committed a war crime when he gave an illegal order that led to the killing of incapacitated survivors of the U.S. strike in the Caribbean,” Nevada Democratic Sen. Sen. Jacky Rosen said in a statement earlier in December. 

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Several Republican members of the House Armed Services Committee and House Foreign Affairs Committee told Fox News Digital that the Trump administration has been well within its rights to act against Maduro’s regime. They added that they’re eager for more information after several strikes against alleged Venezuelan drug boats and Trump’s heightened rhetoric targeting Maduro.

Trump campaigned on ending the flow of narcotics flowing across U.S. borders in 2024, vowing after his election win to deploy the Navy to assist in the effort. 

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“To stop the deadly drugs that are poisoning our people, I will deploy the U.S. Navy to impose a full fentanyl blockade on the waters of our region.…The drug cartels are waging war on America, and we will destroy those cartels!” Trump wrote on Truth Social a day before his inauguration.

 Fox News Digital’s Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report.