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You must go through them all and pick up where you left off alphabetically.ĬAMILA: At first I thought it wasn't going to be that difficult accessing information on what kind of stocks congressional staffers in the Senate were trading. So good luck checking the records every week hoping to spot new filings. But there's no way to limit the search to a more narrow time frame. The other option for looking through the database is to select a year, such as 2021, to see all the filings reported so far. If you look at a document, it will show only the state abbreviation and the district, or list the abbreviation for the committee. The House documents don't even say which member of Congress each person works for. You can't just type in "Nancy Pelosi" or "Kevin McCarthy" and see the financial disclosures their senior staff submitted. I realized there wasn't an easy way to search these records. (The Senate records are located elsewhere - more on that in a moment.)īefore I could begin searching the records, I had to type my name, address, and organization into the only computer that was working at the time. I finally found the House records in the Cannon Office Building basement. KIMBERLY: It took me half a day to figure out where in the sprawling US Capitol campus - there are numerous office buildings beyond the Capitol - the financial disclosures were located. After talking to experts, we learned it was that way by design. The process taught us the extent to which elected officials and their staff were willing to go to obscure information they're required to make publicly available. WARREN: What we learned wasn't just that roughly 200 people had filed their disclosures late. KIMBERLY: We spent countless hours on Capitol Hill, and we went back multiple times ahead of publishing our project, but in the end we did look at every filing from the start of 2020 to the end of August 2021.ĬAMILA: That meant sifting through approximately 8,300 filings - more than 4,400 from high-ranking House staffers, and nearly 3,900 from high-ranking Senate staffers - click by mind-numbing click.
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That meant spending endless hours on Capitol Hill scrolling through ever-changing financial records. KIMBERLY: By law, congressional staffers whose salaries exceed a certain annual threshold - more than $132,552 in 2021 and $131,239 in 2020 - are required to disclose what stocks they bought and sold.ĬAMILA: Back in August, we at Insider realized that the only way to find out whether senior congressional staffers were violating the law through late filings or potential conflicts of interests would be to manually check every single financial disclosure and reported stock trade. WARREN ROJAS: They could also be taking advantage of these privileges and making certain well-timed stock investments, which could go against current regulations. This information is only readily accessible via computers located in windowless rooms in the House Cannon Building basement and the Senate Hart Building.ĬAMILA DECHALUS: Some may wonder, why does that matter? Why did we spend countless hours looking at these records? Well, senior congressional staffers regularly have access to sensitive information that lawmakers are getting in closed-door meetings that is not available to the public. To obtain these records without an indeterminate wait or great expense, or without playing phone tag with the Office of Public Records, you have to physically go to Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. But when we tried, our calls either went to voicemail or we were asked to fill out forms to retrieve these records - a process that could take weeks. For Senate records, they're $0.20 per page. KIMBERLY LEONARD: Theoretically, you can call to obtain copies of congressional staffers' personal financial disclosures.