New York (CNN Business) In another major defection from the newsroom of Fox News, Catherine Herridge is joining CBS News as a senior investigative correspondent.

Herridge, Fox's chief intelligence correspondent, was a founding employee of Fox News in 1996 and a leader in the network's Washington bureau.

She was in talks to join CBS before Shep Smith , also a founding Fox employee, resigned on October 11 in the middle of a multi-year contract, according to two people with knowledge of the situation.

Catherine Herridge is leaving Fox News for CBS.

Herridge's Fox contract expired over the summer. Fox wanted her to renew, but knew her exit was a possibility, one of the sources said. Friday will be her last day.

In a statement released through Fox, Herridge thanked Fox patriarch Rupert Murdoch "for the opportunity to cover the most impactful stories of the last 23 years, most recently the Special Counsel report and impeachment inquiry. I have received great personal satisfaction from mentoring the next generation of reporters and producers and sharing my journalistic values — that facts matter and enterprise reporting will always win the day."

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