Since Donald Trump became president in January, he and more than 400 of his appointees together have filed thousands of pages worth of information concerning their assets, income, business ties – and potential conflicts of interest.
The Center for Public Integrity and Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting today are asking you to help us tell the stories hidden in these records by becoming a #CitizenSleuth.
Scour our searchable, sortable database of Trump administration financial disclosures to, for example, provide tips about mysterious companies contained within.
Or perhaps you have a hint about how a key Trump administration official’s friends or colleagues stand to benefit from knowing a presidential confidant.
Maybe you’ll simply spot something that looks strange – missing data, possible errors, a business listing that doesn’t actually exist.
We’ve worked hard to make these complex records as easy to understand as possible. And we’re here to investigate your tips and answer your questions.
Read this primer to know what to look for. And once you begin your sleuthing, these are the best ways to contact us:
- Leave a public comment within our database. Start at the first tab, on the lower left, and work your way across from left to right. If you see something interesting, make a note in the “Comments” section available for every cell in the spreadsheet.
- Email tips to newstips@publicintegrity.org.
- Reach out to us on Twitter using the hashtag #CitizenSleuth, first employed earlier this year as part of a successful effort to unmask donors to Trump’s inaugural committee.
Some people you’ll find in the #CitizenSleuth database are household names, such as Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Trump chief strategist Stephen Bannon and Trump himself. (Trump administration officials are listed in alphabetical order.)
But you’ll find hundreds of other Trump administration officials who serve in critical capacities with minimal fanfare and news coverage.
These under-the-radar hires are no less important. Already, they’re helping shape U.S. policy on matters ranging from military affairs to environmental protection and student debt relief.
One way to better understand the Trump administration is to understand the vested interests of the president’s lieutenants, whose salaries are paid by U.S. taxpayers. After all, you can learn a lot about a person by knowing who they’ve worked for, or who owes them money or, for that matter, to whom they owe money.
We know this much: Taken together, Trump appointees reported affiliations with at least 950 limited liability companies/partnerships and at least 350 corporations at the time they accepted federal government jobs.
The #CitizenSleuth project evolved from an earlier Center for Public Integrity collaboration with ProPublica which has been obtaining the Trump administration disclosures from government sources and has been making them available as PDFs.
Here’s the database. Let’s get sleuthing.
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