Elizabeth Clemons and Anna Massoglia Transcript — Oct. 8, 2025
Kevin Johnson/NPF (00:00:00):
Many of your applications to this fellowship underscored a troubling reality in our industry that resources are rapidly dwindling and that decades of expertise is walking out the door. And it’s why I called on the Sunlight Research Center. This nonpartisan, talented group of experts helps equip news organizations to support investigative reporting, holding local leaders to account and delivering on journalism’s public service obligation. Anna Massoglia is the director of investigations for the group. She’s with us today along with Elizabeth Clemons, who is the director of training, and they’re here to share access to data sets, search tools and best practices, tailored to boost any newsroom. And I think at the end, you’ll all be able to take back something to your news organizations that you’ll be able to use. So please welcome Anna and Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Clemons/Sunlight Research Center (00:01:18):
This is on. It’s on. Thank you for having us. Yeah, thank you all so much for having us here today. We’re so excited to be here and we’re really grateful for the National Press Foundation for inviting us to be here today. We’re going to be talking today about Sunlight Research Center. I recognize some of your faces and your name, so I think that we’ve interacted over the past year or so, but we’ll also be talking about reporting and research with at-Risk public records. I’m Elizabeth Clemens, as he mentioned. I’m the director of Training and Tools here at Sunlight. I have a background in investigative research, so I’ve worked with different organizations including the Department of Defense and Campaign for Accountability. And yeah, I’ve done research on various topics including gender-based violence and looking at data privacy violations. I’ve been at Sunlight since the very beginning, a little over two years ago, and it’s been really cool to see our evolution over the past two plus years. And a lot of what I do here is the training and tools. So yeah, some of you have attended our different workshops over the past year and a half or so, and same with the tools. I hope that some of you have interacted with different tools that we’ve created. I’ll go more into that in a couple of slides, but I’ll let Anna introduce herself as well.
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (00:02:38):
I’m Anna Massoglia. I’m the director of Investigations at Sunlight Research Center as a part what’s called our research desk, which is effectively a shared research desk among a number of local and regional news organizations. I’ll explain a little bit more about that later. I also work as an editor at an organization called Muck Rock that works with public records requests as well as an independent analyst with a number of different organizations and sometimes a freelance writer and researcher. I’m really excited today to talk about disappearing government data, ways we can preserve that government data. My background is in tracking money and politics. I worked in an organization called Open Secrets for several years where I tracked money from opaque sources, foreign political spending, and ran our editorial department. I’ve also worked at Bloomberg and a variety of other places over the years. So very excited to be bringing that expertise to shine some more light on how to better use government records and preserve them for future use. And I’ll pass it over to Elizabeth for that. Sweet.
Elizabeth Clemons/Sunlight Research Center (00:03:41):
It’s kind of loud anyways, is there a way we could stop at us? That’s probably us.
Kevin Johnson/NPF (00:03:53):
Oh, got it. Elizabeth,
Elizabeth Clemons/Sunlight Research Center (00:03:55):
We stand a little bit further apart, but if you’d like to scan this QR code, this will send you to Sunlight’s website. But generally to give some background on sunlight, we started a little over two years ago and we’ve evolved with what we’ve been offering to you all. But a couple of things that we offer. One include the community workshops that we host every month. Those are free for anyone in our community to attend. And the recordings I’ll mention in a moment are also available online. We also have occasional premium certificate series. And so with those you get a certificate and a digital badge to put on your resume or LinkedIn. We also have the research help desk, which Anna leads and she’ll talk more about in a moment. But through that, different member newsrooms have access to really amazing research that our research team does.
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And thinking about the membership, we have various options. In a couple of slides, there’ll be a QR code where you can access the membership link so you can see the different options that your newsroom could access. And one thing I want to mention is that if you aren’t already a member, please do try to sign up soon if your newsroom is interested because for a limited time, we have some philanthropic support to give discounted rates, discounted memberships to a limited number of newsrooms. But beyond that, we have an investigative toolkit that’ll go into in a couple of slides. And we have a Slack channel where you can engage with sunlight’s research experts and also research experts from different organizations. So if you’re interested in joining that Slack channel, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me. And along with the membership that we currently have, we’re partnered with Muck Rock, which is really exciting. And that means that if you’re a paying member of Sunlight, you get access to a premium muck shop, muck rock count, where you get 50 free public records requests per month.
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So I want to go into Sunlight’s Collective Impact. This is something it’s really important for us. We don’t want to just provide training and research, but we want to make sure that what we’re doing is an impact on your local communities. And so over the past two years or so, we’ve connected with and helped to train and worked with for different news stories, over 400 journalists, over 100 newsrooms, and we’ve contributed to over 25 different stories. And speaking of the workshops, it’s been really neat to see. We’ve had people attend them from all across the world. And so we love engaging with our community and growing our community as we grow. But yeah, as you can see here too, we really care about the impacts that we have on local communities. So thinking about the work that we do with Range, it led to a Spokane official pledging to divest from certain stocks. And same with Nevada Independent. There was local impact there where they called for revamped disclosure forms to potentially increased financial transparency. And yeah, I’ll let Anna talk later on more about the impact of other stories that we’ve worked on. But as you can see on the left, there’s a lot of different newsrooms that we’ve worked with, including Wisconsin Watch, and I see you Bennett here. Nice to see you.
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Am bummed the slides look different before, but that’s okay. Anyways, so one way that sunlight can help are the workshops and tools, which this is primarily what I do here at Sunlight. And so you can scan this QR code to explore and register for our different workshops. So as I mentioned, we have monthly community workshops. Those are free for anyone from our community to attend. And we have different topics varying from things like last month was sourcing, we’ve done interviewing 1 0 1 and how to conduct really good interviews to things like, which we’ll talk about today, government data disappearing and how you can collect and maintain your own data. And actually this month, at the end of this month, Annalia will be presenting on international business transactions. So if you want to chat a bit about that session can feel free to jump in.
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (00:08:08):
Alright, let’s see if this works. Alright, perfect. So this month we’re going to be talking about international business transactions. Basically tracing back shell companies, looking through the different layers of businesses and nonprofits that are not just having domestic presences, but also looking at offshore companies and bank accounts and how to get a more complete picture of those organizations through a variety of different documents, not just looking at US-based documents, but also sources from other countries, how to get over language barriers if you don’t have those language skills, that type of thing. So very excited for that one as well.
Elizabeth Clemons/Sunlight Research Center (00:08:43):
Yeah, we’re really excited for that. And so make sure to sign up for that at that QR code there. And we also have occasional certificate premium workshops. We just hosted one of those series that on candidate backgrounding and it was focusing on the state and local level. And as I mentioned, if you complete those, you get a certificate in digital badge. We also host office hours and there’s community and members only office hours. And so the office hours that follow are community workshops. Our focus specifically on the workshops that we’ve provided, but the community office hours that we host, those are for anyone to come. And if you’re working on a story or want some research help, you can attend and pick our brains and get some help from the Sunlight. Staff members only Office hours, same thing, but it’s for members only. And then lastly, we have an investigative toolkit, which we’ll go into here yet again, you can scan this and explore the toolkit, but we have workshop recordings, which they’re the community workshops similar to the one that Ann is hosting this month.
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Those are recorded and uploaded to our site. So if you’ve missed one from the past or you would like to rewatch something or learn about something, check out our workshop recordings. They’re all available there. And then there’s also tip sheets. And so almost all of our workshops that we host have an accompanying tip sheet with a ton of information and resources. And sometimes they’re not just from workshops, we have other tip sheets including things like state by state financial disclosures at the state level. And then we have reporting recipes. So these are detailed walkthroughs of how to do some specific type of reporting. So one of them includes tracking PPP loans to political candidates. We also have how-to videos, which are quick and targeted, how-to videos on how to navigate certain databases, how to do certain type of research. Things that are included in this are like how to navigate the SEC, how to analyze certain forms on the SEC, things like that.
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We also have templates. These are really helpful to keep you and your research organized. And so we have timelines and source lists here, and you can even track legislator activity on that as well. We also have things like a research guide. And the research guide is really helpful for if you’re trying to navigate how to find information, whether it’s open source or government information, you can filter through that whole research guide and then find different websites and databases to search. And we have an advanced internet search guide which gives you tips on navigating different web browsers.
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And so thinking about our topic today, which is at risk public records and public data we have or it’s really important for us to be talking about that now a lot of data is disappearing and Anna and I will talk more about this as we’re going throughout our session today, but that it’s not just a risk to transparency, but it’s a risk to all of our reporting and all of our research, which is a risk to transparency. But we have thinking about our specific toolkit, we have a workshop recording on a workshop that we did earlier this year on government data disappearing and what you can do to preserve data yourself. We have a tip sheet that goes along with that. And then we also have a reporting recipe on a DOGE scraper that one of our reporters and researchers Michael Nolan created. And so this DOGE scraper is really helpful because it walks you through how you can create something like this, which what it does is it scrapes the data from DOGE and then it flags when there are changes made to DOGE.
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And so looking at that one on our website, you can see how he made it and also the different stories that came about from that reporting recipe. But there’s several different tools to track changes to government data disappearing or changes or not being maintained. And so one big one is claxon. And so that’s part of Muck Rock Document Cloud. And as I mentioned, muck Rock is one of our partners, and this lets you set up alerts for when a page or a certain part of a page is changed. And this works on most government campaign websites. This is really helpful because specifically you can set up alerts for a specific part of the page and not just an entire page. So this is helpful for tracking data changes. And one thing I’ll mention about Clarkson is that it integrates really well with the internet archives way back machine.
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And I’m sure most if not all of you are familiar with that, but in that integration, you can get notifications of changes over time, whether it’s additions or disappearances. And then I also want to highlight this tip sheet, this it’s the Bitly link right here, but at IRE earlier this year, Anna, along with some other people, including some people from Sunlight, they were on a panel to talk about government data disappearances and what you can do to maintain that yourself. And actually tomorrow at Access Fest, we’re hosting a similar panel, so make sure you attend if you’d like to. But the tip sheet from that is available right there and that has a ton of different resources and highlighting different tools that you can use to track changes to government
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (00:14:14):
Data and whether or not you’re attending Access Fest or attended IRE, the tip sheet is, or even if you’re not an IRE member, the tip sheet’s fully available to anyone through the Sunlight site through that Bitly link. So you should still be able to have access to all of those resources. And if there is something that you want to access that you can’t, such as the slides or anything, please feel free to reach out to us as well. Thanks Anna, and
Elizabeth Clemons/Sunlight Research Center (00:14:36):
I’ll pass it over to you to talk about this.
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (00:14:37):
That was great. Alright, hopefully we don’t set it off. Thank you. Alright, so I was just going to talk a little bit about some of the tools that are outlined within that tip sheet that we noted. So I’m not going to walk through all of these. This is obviously a, but just some of the different tools that I’ve used over the years to track changes. So one of the roles that I’ve held over the years was while I was working with specifically Bloomberg Tax was looking at a portfolio of a little bit more than 90 countries in 92 primary. Usually their payroll tax and labor law changes every single day. So anytime one of those countries had a change, I was trying to track it. There were a lot of issues with that and hurdles, and so I learned a lot about how to automate tracking changes during that time.
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Ended up working with the Sunlight Foundation during the first Trump administration on their website monitoring project to do some similar work to what’s happening right now with tracking disappearing data, tracking the thousands of pages that we’re changing and disappearing. And so some of this says knowledge comes from that. This is just kind of a list of tools that I’ve found that are really useful. You might not want to use all of them, but different tools have different benefits. So for example, visual Ping is one I use a lot. It’s got a great Chrome extension, but it’s freemium, so there’s a limit to how much you use it unless you want to pay. I tend to try to find more tools that are free or low cost for journalists since I think that cost is an issue for a lot of newsrooms. Website watcher does tend to be more expensive, but it’s something that you can host within your own within Windows.
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And so if security or privacy is an issue, that can be another one that’s really good. The other ones the big difference and it outlines it here. Some are better at scraping texts, some are better at scraping numbers, some are better at scraping dynamic content or buttons or pages where you need to scroll or pages that have toolboxes that pop up. And so depending on the types of pages that you need to track at any given time, you use a different tool for different things. And so these are all listed in the tip sheet at the bottom. Highly recommend checking them out and if you have any questions along the way, feel free to reach out. For example, one’s Firefox Chrome. I could go through all the changes, but basically there’s different ones for different uses. And then
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (00:16:59):
Kind of going back to whether your data sets are at risk, I think we lost some of our white text to a white background during some of the conversion. Do you want me to do this or do you want to do it either work? I think I remember what was on this one. So happy work on this, happy to go through at least some of it or do you remember what was on this slide?
Elizabeth Clemons/Sunlight Research Center (00:17:18):
Yes,
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (00:17:19):
I think this one was yours if you want to do it. Yeah, I’ll SNA this
Elizabeth Clemons/Sunlight Research Center (00:17:21):
One. That would be great. I’m so sorry, our slides all looked like this before and now they look like this. But basically it’s really important to think about the data sets that you’re using for your research and reporting. If they’re at risk and if they’re at risk or if you’re even questioning if they’re at risk, make sure you check different databases online to see if they’re there. And so there are several, I’m going to go into more on the next slide, which we’ll see if the white text will be disappearing there too, but some of those include, it was like gov data or data gov and there’s gov. What was the second one? I don’t have it memorized off. There are two different ones listed on this slide that are also listed on this tip sheet that are helpful for finding government data. And so make sure to visit this tip sheet to check out those different resources.
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (00:18:14):
And even if your resources aren’t listed on something that they are disappeared or are at risk, it can be worth starting to track now to add trackers to different websites to see if something could be a risk. There’s very innocuous pages that sometimes can disappear or be altered or changed. And so that’s something that is worth tracking before it becomes an issue so that you have those archive versions to look back on as well. I’m trying to remember what I saw yesterday. I just saw a page from OPM go away and because it’s in the internet archive, I was able to find the old version of the page. And so every day there’s something that you might not expect to become an issue. So if you rely on something regularly, it’s important to start now to set up archiving or set up notifications. I would recommend as soon as possible rather than waiting until it is at risk.
Elizabeth Clemons/Sunlight Research Center (00:19:07):
Definitely. And actually thinking about what was originally on this slide, which you can’t see now, there are a couple of different organizations that we listed here, including the data curation network. I’m sure a lot of you have heard of them, but there are really amazing organization that works to teach everyone how to do things like archiving their own data and then preserving their own data. So yeah, if you are relying on a data set for your research and reporting, make sure that you’re taking it into your own hands and preserving the data yourself. And so beyond the data curation network, there’s also the Data Liberation project and the Data Rescue Project. The Data Rescue Project is a collaborative volunteer driven initiative that’s composed of different organizations that work to archive data and provide everyone with access to that archive data. And then the data liberation project is run by big local news and our partners at Muck Rock and on data liberation projects website, you can find access to saved data and saved documents to make sure you check that out. But otherwise listed on this slide where a bunch of other more independent organizations that are working to archive data, they’re also listed in the tip sheet, the Bitly tip sheet that I have linked in this slide and in other slides. But
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (00:20:30):
Yeah, so some tricks to keep track of the resources you use. Some of them I think I mentioned a little, I got a little bit ahead of myself since we have some blank slides starting early, started archiving early. Archiving often I think is another one. So not only starting to archive now and starting to set up those notifications, but making sure that you are checking sites regularly for changes. It’s not just about a site now versus when it changes. Sometimes these changes can happen gradually over time. There can be multiple different iterations of something. And so that’s where I think the notifications can come in handy to be able to see is something changing weekly? Is it changing monthly? And so really being cognizant of all of the different iterations of the resources you use and archiving each of those versions as they go. Another element of kind of keeping track of the resources is looking at the last updated date.
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It can be really important to see when something was last updated rather than just assuming it is up to date. This is particularly important right now, whether the reliance on government data, the shutdown being a prime example of something that has exacerbated on already significant issue where there are a number of under-resourced understaffed agencies that may not be upkeeping certain data sets. It’s always worth checking what the date of last update was or reaching out to those government agencies when they’re open to try to find out and reach out. It can be great to actually establish that relationship. In many cases when I’ve reached out to data specialists at government agencies or at the state or federal level, they’ve all been very friendly, very eager to help and very happy to explain what information they’re putting out so it can’t hurt to reach out as well as some other tips to keep track of research. I’m trying to remember what all the other
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (00:22:25):
Ones were. It’s like a guessing game here, but I think that those were kind of the gist of it. Again, some more considerations with disappearing dating. This also had things on it, so apologies in it. Again,
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (00:22:38):
We can share the slides, we can also share the slides with y’all, so you’ll have these lists, but oh, perfect. You do have the slides. Wonderful. I hope I’m guessing correctly with what’s on them. But some of the biggest considerations really are that that government shut down are the fact that data is getting stale. In addition to that, people leaving the government, and it’s not just data disappearing, it’s also data changing. It’s also data being manipulated, not always for nefarious purposes. It could be the fact that a data dictionary disappears, it could be the code that you need to understand that information or the accompanying, there’s a lot of that could make data less valuable or usable that aren’t actually a data set itself. And so it’s really important to keep those things in mind as well as you are archiving and keeping up with different things.
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There’s also the component of individuals leaving. So there’s obviously that is another component that’s exacerbating this where not just the government shutting down, but individuals leaving the government and mass right now has left a number of agencies in an unprecedented to some extent situation. And so making sure you are archiving things again, even if they aren’t controversial, even if these aren’t things that you would normally consider at risk, making sure that there is that archive. And this is something that’s even if you wouldn’t consider yourself normally an archive journalist or that wouldn’t be your normal goal, even if it’s just for your own personal purposes, if it’s something you use regularly, having that can be really helpful. Having documents, having data sets, having an internal copy in case the external copy goes away or changes can be really valuable. And it also raises the question of accountability mechanisms both for government and non-government sources.
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Traditionally with government sources, we have been able to look at them as a credible source and cite them as usually pretty in a different way than you would when a random person says something from journalistic standards. There are usually less reasons to question official government numbers unless there’s a reason to question it and there are starting to be more reasons to question some of ’em. And so I think keeping that in mind as you are describing information without unnecessarily drawing conclusions or rising conspiracy theories, it’s a really hard balance to strike between lending credibility to something that might not have credibility or causing a panic that doesn’t need to be there. And so I think it’s a really hard balance to strike. I don’t know what the right answer to that is, but it’s something to really consider as you are describing things of how much do I trust this data set that I’m using, how should I be describing it?
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For me personally, the way I’ve handled that is this site says, this agency says this data set says this rather than this is fact. And I think that there is an inclination, or at least there has been a number of journalists that I’ve read over the years to say this is fact. This is what the job numbers are, this is how many people are employed, unemployed, what have you. And for me, I make a point to cite this is what this says, this is what this shows. And rather than actually saying this is fact and not saying it in a questioning way, not saying it in a way that I am criticizing the credibility of something, but just citing that source I think could be a good, at least for me, that has worked over the years as a way to handle it. But I know everyone handles things in different ways and you have to find what works for you.
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It also raises a question of accountability mechanisms with outsized sources as well. So as you are not able to rely on government sources for primary sources of information as much, and other actors are starting to pick up some of that slack, there isn’t as much of a standardized robust accountability measures. There aren’t systems in place to say, oh, they need to do this with the data, they need to hold this, have these checks. Whereas at least at one point in the government there were to some extent those standards with inspectors general and a variety of other things, at least some agencies who are pretty transparent about their methodologies. And there are vary levels of transparency I think with outside nonprofits and other organizations that are archiving this data. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t cite these of sources, but it’s I think really important to go in and see those methodologies.
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Check things for yourself. It can be helpful to have two sources checking those if that doesn’t exist, at least asking yourself why is this organization archiving this? If an organization is only archiving things in one issue area, why is that? Do they have an interest in this issue area? And so sometimes figuring out how to best describe an organization, even if it’s not, it could be an advocacy organization archiving something, and that doesn’t mean you can’t cite them, but describing them accurately as that source I think is really important because they aren’t objective, but they’re putting out important information. And so figuring out the best way to use that. And again, it’s different for every news organization, different for every person, but it’s something to consider rather than just consuming the data sets as fact as an alternative to the government data. So making sure that you are considering the source that you’re getting it from.
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And I don’t know if Elizabeth, you had anything add to this one? You covered all of it. Alright, so on that note, switching over to the S research desk, make sure we keeping on track. So as we mentioned earlier, I work with the Sunlight Research Center and head our research desk. This is an on-demand research desk. This supports high impact stories with things like backgrounding document gathering and data analysis. I know this is a bit of a jarring turn, so I think we can break for questions towards the end. We’ll leave about 20 minutes to give folks time to ask things. So if you have any questions, please do save them. I’d love to hear all at the end and chat more. So we’ll leave at the very least 20 minutes for questions at the end. And so our Sunlight Research desk basically is a shared research desk.
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This came from the idea that any local news and regional news organizations and even national news organizations do not have research desks anymore. They don’t have the capacity, the in-house knowledge resources, time to be able to have their own research desk. This is a way for them to have access to that on demand. For those of you who haven’t really worked with Research Desk, basically you can come to us and say, I’m working on this story. I need this data set, or I want to do this research, or I need to understand this data set, or I have a person I want to background them. I want to know everything about find a certain public record wide range of different tasks that we could get at any given day. These are some of our examples of our, we work really collaboratively with the newsrooms When they come to us.
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The process is really, they’ll come out, reach out to us with a research request and we will meet with them the newsroom and usually loop in one of the members of the research team, at least one to talk through what that request is and what is feasible and talk through what their timeline is when they need things. Sometimes the request is more developed than others. Sometimes I know I look into this person or I know I want to look into this organization, but they don’t really have much else in terms of what those resources they need look like. Other times they know very specifically what they need from us. And so we kind of parse that out of the course of sometimes one meeting, sometimes multiple. From there, we will assign that request to our research team who will then work together over the course of, it could be a few days if it’s a very urgent request to several months for a much longer term big investigative request.
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We have small, medium and large requests. A small request could be something like, I want to know all of the property records of this candidate everywhere that they’ve owned property, or I want to know the campaign finance history of this specific donor, or I want to know all the top donors to this specific candidate in a certain way. And so it’s kind of one component of a person or an organization. A medium-sized project might be a little bit more robust. Where we would be a medium-sized project would be a little bit more robust where we could say, do an overall background on a candidate. Say I want to know their background. I want to know all of their property records everywhere they’ve lived, all of their jobs, any other details, all of their educational history, all of their criminal history. It could be be social media, looking at social media analysis.
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It could be talks they’ve given. It could be pretty much a full gamut of different things. And we can piece together whatever is of most interest to you for that specific story, either in a combination of small projects or piece them together into a medium sized project or in some cases if you want to do a real deep dive, a large project which could sometimes be digging into a whole network of groups or a very, very deep dive into one person or organization or network of organizations. There’s a lot of transparency and fact checking based into the process, especially when we have longer term investigations, meet with the newsroom regularly when they have availability to make sure that we’re staying on the right track as we find new things. We want to make sure this is still useful and valuable to their story, that the scope and the direction of the story hasn’t changed and that we are headed in the right direction because there are a lot of choices along the way as you do research in particular with backgrounding because going in, you don’t always know what you’re going to find.
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And so making sure that we’re focusing on the things that are of the most interest to them as we know what we are to find. And so it’s a lot of check-ins and then we end up generating a report at the end that outlines all of the key findings that we were able to find, which then link down to a much more in-depth section of the report going down and kind of detailing everything along with citations and an accompanying folder with all of the underlying resources, property records, campaign finance records, pretty much every document and link you will need in order to fact check and replicate the process. We also are always happy to help with fact checking the stories, looking over drafts and anything else even after we pass off the research as well. So we’re very collaborative throughout the process. And of course we protect sourcing and editorial independence.
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We’re very confidential. We make a point to be very careful. We’ve helped with some sensitive stories in the past and are very cautious and happy to accommodate whatever needs you have as well. We have signal to communicate as need be, as well as a variety of other channels. So whatever works best for you, we are happy to accommodate that. And these are just a few examples of our collaborations. This is a couple of examples of some more recent stories from the research desk on the right, you’ll see the Wisconsin story from Wisconsin watch about Michael Gman. This was kind of a big deep dive into his career where we looked into everything from his educational history to his classmates to campaign finance records and pretty much the full gamut of his life. That’s a good example of a deep dive that we did on the left.
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It’s kind of more of a medium-sized project where we did small, I guess three small projects where we looked into three candidates who were going to be heading what’s called Star base, the new city in Texas where SpaceX is located ahead of the election to make the city official. And people weren’t sure who these people really were. So we looked into their employment history, who their families were, where their properties were, where they had lived, their employment history, kind of just seeing who they were in order to see who’s going to actually run this town. So kind of more of a general overview. That’s a good example of that. It’s great for voter guide types of things. We’ve done a lot of help with voter guides, help with debate preps, so if you run debates or anything or that type of stuff, kind of the cursory overview.
(00:35:03):
So the two ends of the spectrum with backgrounding. A few other examples of work we do on the left. I think that the text is a little bit small, but here’s an example of the Nevada independent work we did looking at lawmaker landlords where we pieced together personal financial disclosures. This is a great example of looking at multiple different sources, which I think could be really important in research where we pulled the personal financial disclosures that were required to be filed by state legislators and we checked those against property records with the state to see which ones had properties that were not disclosed or who had reported rental income in their personal financial disclosures but did not report property. And so kind of looking at discrepancies in those and ultimately they ended up using the defense that the forms were very confusing, but we did find some interesting discrepancies there on the right.
(00:35:56):
We also do a lot of digging into campaign finance records. This one is looking at the abortion travel ban election. So looking at ballot measures, we’re always happy to crunch numbers to collect numbers at the state or federal level or walk you through if you’re not even sure if numbers are a database exists. We’ve also created guides for people with here are the databases that you might want to check out and guides on how to use them. So we have a lot of different wide range of projects that we help with. Just a couple others just to show off some of our stories. Arizona luminary another one, the one on the left, that’s just another example of property records where half the candidates in Southern Arizona’s congressional special election didn’t live in the district. That was a lot of checking property records of varying types on the right.
(00:36:42):
We also looked at criminal histories and PPP loans to see that one of the individuals running was also on federal probation, which was kind of an issue for him actually would’ve been an issue for him getting to Congress had he won. And so if you can see this very light list here of the things the research does, the additional things that aren’t really highlighted those, we also do FOIA support. So if you’re looking to file public records requests either at the federal or at the state or local level, we’re happy to provide support in writing and submitting those requests, especially in partnership with Muck Rock. We’re happy to help with document retrieval. Any types of requests of that type, we’re happy to, I think I mentioned dataset identification, verifying data sets, verifying older or missing or partial data, rebuilding data sets. For example, someone got a tip that a dataset exists and that they had built one, but they can’t provide it.
(00:37:39):
And so with the guidance of knowing where they had gotten the pieces rebuilt, that dataset. And so things like that. We’re also happy to help with data scraping parsing metadata documentation, so pulling things from PDFs and making that into usable, standardized, formatted data. And that’s just examples of things we do. If you’re looking for something else, please reach out to us still. And this is just a few examples. We do a lot. So I think that we are coming close to a good time to at least move over to some questions and we can always go into more depth on those things later, but I will move it over to that and let folks answer questions for both of us.
Taylor Vance | Mississippi Today (00:38:19):
Sweet. My name’s Taylor v. I’m a reporter from Mississippi today, and thank you both for being here. I’m just curious now that AI has become so common, if y’all use AI doing research and if you have any tips that you can share about maybe how we can ethically and responsibly use AI when we’re doing our own research?
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (00:38:42):
That is actually something we’re looking into right now. Sorry about that. That’s actually something we’re looking into right now. We don’t currently use it as a part of our research process. In my own personal time, I’ve experimented with discrete data sets to see how AI could potentially be used for cleaning data, for retrieving information and have frankly not found it to be consistent or reliable enough for use in the research process. When I’ve played around with it. Like I also have concerns about confidentiality with feeding any information into that system and would definitely want to get reporters consent. And I don’t know if any of the reporters are currently working with would want that, but just from a reliability standpoint, from playing with it with outside data sets, I’ve found it very inconsistent. Even things like standardizing and cleaning up data. I’ve found chat, GPT inconsistent, GR is a little bit better with the data sets, but just very random issues with it even with that.
(00:39:45):
And so I don’t think we’re quite there to rely on it at this point, at least in any comprehensive way, especially with confidential data. It might be helpful as an accompanying tool for some people to get ideas for things or to find resources, but I would say anything that is more substantive or at all sensitive in any way, shape or form, I wouldn’t use it with at this point. That said, we are looking into it, sunlight Research Center and Muck Rock got a grant to look into using AI and research and how to more responsibly do that and develop policies. So I would stay tuned because we’re going to release something on that at least within the next year or so. So we’re looking into it and any ideas you have on that are also very welcomed as well.
Amir Khafagy | Documented (00:40:29):
Hello? Oh, okay. I sound like that. Okay. Anyway, so one question I had was about FOIAs and freedom of information requests. I know being specific is very helpful and knowing what you’re looking for is really the key, but do you have any advice for, how would you go about looking for data or looking for information that you’re kind of on a fishing expedition, you have a sense that they have this data, but you don’t necessarily know for sure what to look for. How would you go about finding or requesting things that you’re not as specific about?
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (00:41:06):
That’s a good question. Usually I’ll check the site first. I will look for their menu of the site, so do a Boolean search especially and look for key terms. So if for example, I was searching for a.gov site and I was looking for something about, I’m just going to daisies because I can’t think of something specific in policy neutral, and I would just put that with the site.gov and combine it and then maybe do file XLS or something and see if anything comes up and do a few variations. That’s the least. Where I would start would be looking at variations of the site and do some Boolean searches and see if I could find a site menu. If that doesn’t work, I might try to reach out to whoever. If there is a person on the other end of the line who is friendly, talk to them.
(00:41:51):
If that does not work, I would end up sending a request. There are ways to word it that I’ve had decent success with before where I’ll say, this is the type of thing I would like if this is not available, can you confirm the existence of more broad thing? Or saying, if this specific data set isn’t available, can you confirm whether you track this bigger thing that I’m trying to look into or something like that. So I can usually get at least confirmed existence of something if you’re trying to track something more general, if that makes sense. So I would say having contingencies in your
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (00:42:36):
FOIA request that if this isn’t available, please provide this. If this isn’t available, please provide
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (00:42:41):
This. Usually I’ve had pretty friendly people and I am like, if you’re not the right person, if you
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (00:42:47):
Can refer me. But sometimes they’re more confrontational, honestly, and they don’t care. So that’s hit or miss. But I’ve had decent luck with that in the past a few times.
Sean Keenan | Atlanta Civic Circle (00:42:58):
Hey there, I’m Sean Keenan, I’m here from Atlanta. I feel like I need to preface my question with an example of what I’m talking about. In Atlanta, there’s this big controversial police training campus project. It was like a hundred million dollars and it was being built in the woods, clear cutting required, blah, blah. Obviously a lot of our residents wanted to know how that plan came together, what they were spending their tax dollars on. The problem was the project was spearheaded by the Atlanta Police Foundation, which is a private entity, a police lobby. So this local news outlet sued the police foundation and said, because you are effectively operating at the government’s behest, you should be subject to public records requests. A judge said, okay, yeah, you’re right. It didn’t set precedent, but it did allow them to get those records. So the overarching question is, does Sunlight Research Center have any tools for identifying and obtaining records, public records that are not technically public records? And I bring this up because I cover housing. I think you mentioned one of your stories looked at landlords. Obviously a lot of these corporate landlords camouflage themselves behind layers of shell companies. So actually understanding who these entities are can be tricky. So yeah, overarching question, how to find public records that are not really public records.
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (00:44:33):
So in this case, it’s a nonprofit that is government adjacent, if I’m understanding correctly. Yes, the sole
Sean Keenan | Atlanta Civic Circle (00:44:41):
Function is to work. The sole function of that organization was to work on behalf of the Atlanta Police Department, but they were still technically a nonprofit.
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (00:44:53):
Cool, thank you. I would say I’ve had some experience getting public records directly from organizations. For example, getting tax returns from nonprofits has been probably my biggest experience with that, including ones that have no ties to government. So I would say it’s tricky at times. Starting out friendly and then citing the rules has been probably the most effective way. I don’t know if we have tools on this at all, but I think that could be a good thing to develop at some point. But I think different types of records from different types of organizations have, you have to request them in different ways. So just using nonprofit tax records as an example, they can legally require you to file a written request to them. And so I could call them and they’re like, yeah, we’ll give that to you. But then they’re like, you have to write us a letter and then you have to mail us a check for 20 cents per page for this, and then we’ll mail it to you up to 30 days from now.
(00:45:53):
But also, if they have a nine to five business, if they actually have a place of business, I could just show up and they have to give it within 24 hours. And so there’s a lot of intricacies to the rules. I would recommend looking up what the rules are, if there are rules to look up around the group that you’re trying to request from and citing those. Because oftentimes organizations may not even be aware that they’re legally required to give those records away. I think it came a surprise to some organizations that they legally had to provide their tax records in some circumstances. And so citing those rules I think can be helpful, but in a friendly way. So I would say looking at those rules and knowing those, because there’s obviously, that’s just one example, and there’s so many different rules for different types of public records, disclosures from organizations or individuals, and they’re all a little bit different. Happy to help with that though. That seems like a more specific situation. So if you want to reach out, happy to help with that.
Raisa Habersham | Miami Herald (00:46:55):
Hi, I’m Raisa. I haveand with the Miami Herald. Thank you for being with us this afternoon. My question is kind of similar to Sean’s. So I cover race and culture in South Florida, specifically black communities. One story I’ve been working on recently focuses on a private HBCU, so it’s been a little challenge to kind of get any bit of data. So my question to you is, have you ever had clients where you’re assisting them on getting any information, even if it’s at the government level regarding private institutions? And how have you kind of navigated that process? I guess kind of my shorter answer, it’s similar to Sean’s, is where would I go around looking for backend information regarding this institution?
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (00:47:43):
Are you looking for any particular type of information?
Raisa Habersham | Miami Herald (00:47:46):
Well, specific to this situation, there’s been a lot of issues with their board of directors. There’s been what they have said, Hey, an ongoing coup. I know that they have given their new president, and that was a contentious hire, a 10 year contract, which may not necessarily be heard of. And so in short, I guess the information I would be looking for is obviously the contract, any communication obviously between board members, which I, Mike could get, but I’m not sure how much of this university is kind of tied to getting, say, grants like if I wanted to do a separate story, grants from the government. So things like that. So on the small end, this president’s contract on the big end, anything that ties them to getting federal funding.
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (00:48:46):
Got it. I think that honestly, the federal funding and grants are going to be easier gets, you can definitely see that through federal government sites. You can also see grants from other organizations in their tax returns. You can see outgoing grants to those organizations. If you search the name of that college in, for example, ProPublica’s nine 90 search, or if you search the IRS Business master file. So you should be able to track donors at least that way because it’s a private institution, depending on what their bylaws, they set their bylaws. And so depending on what that says, they might not be able to be legally required to provide much else. But I think it would depend what those say in terms it would be legally required to provide you. But I would say starting with looking at government grants, looking at grants from other nonprofits, if you’re looking for funding type of information,
Elizabeth Clemons/Sunlight Research Center (00:49:42):
I’ll add. Thank you. I’ll add too that even if it’s not a public institution, it’s still worthwhile to search on the SEC because you can search, you can either search in the SEC for a ticker number or an organization that has to file with the SEC or you can do an tech search. And so that’d be interesting to see where they pop up and what other organizations they’re connected to.
Simmerdeep Kaur | Walla Walla Union-Bulletin (00:50:07):
Hi, my name is Simmer. I work at the Walla Walla Union Bulletin. Thanks for being here. So I’m covering the hyper-local impacts of the changing federal policies. And one thing I try to do is capture the voices of the people who are getting directly impacted. For instance, I did a story about cuts to Planned Parenthood, and one of my sources was a patient at the Walla Walla Clinic, but it took me more than a week to get in touch with her because the director of the clinic had to connect us, which is not always possible on deadlines. So my question is, is there a faster, more efficient way of getting in touch with these regular people who are getting impacted by the federal policies where you don’t have to, I mean, with the organization itself doesn’t have to be involved, especially for healthcare. Stories like that involve healthcare cuts because many hospitals and health centers, they’ll just cite that, oh, we can’t put you in touch with a patient because of hipaa.
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (00:50:58):
That’s a good question.
Elizabeth Clemons/Sunlight Research Center (00:50:59):
I don’t know. Do you have any idea? Sorry. So are you mainly asking about sourcing?
Raisa Habersham | Miami Herald (00:51:06):
Yes, yes.
Elizabeth Clemons/Sunlight Research Center (00:51:07):
So actually at Sunlight what we do is we don’t do the sourcing and we don’t go out and talk to individuals like that. However, we just had a workshop on sourcing where one of our co-founders, Jim Minz, actually gave a presentation on how best to connect with these people and how to build trust with them and get them to talk to you and give you information. So my best recommendation would be looking to that workshop and the tip sheet from that as well, which I could, I think that would
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (00:51:37):
Really helpful to watch. I think it’s very relevant here
Elizabeth Clemons/Sunlight Research Center (00:51:41):
At Sunlight. That’s like we generally do not do that, actually.
Whitney McKnight | The Edge (00:51:50):
Okay. Thanks for presenting all that you guys have. I have two questions. One is I did a FOIA request recently from, oh, sorry. My name’s Whitney McKnight from the Edge in Kentucky, and I just recently did a FOIA from the state transportation cabinet. It took ’em five months, a little bit under five months. They did stay in touch with me the whole time saying we need more time, but they eventually sent me something, I can’t read it. I’ve tried to open it, I can’t read it. And they said that this is typical. I’m wondering, is that normal for them to send information or anybody to send information in a file format that you’ve never seen before? I was just trying to open it. I can’t remember, but it’s a zip file, and then it was like CAR and all these. I’ve never seen it. I have no idea, and I can’t open it, so I don’t know who to go to help me. So I’m wondering if that’s something that you guys have ever seen, and if you can help with that,
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (00:52:51):
I’m not sure, but happy to take a look if you want to reach out.
Whitney McKnight | The Edge (00:52:54):
Okay.
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (00:52:55):
Yeah, I don’t know if we can fix it, but happy to take a look and see if it’s something we can figure out,
Whitney McKnight | The Edge (00:52:58):
Then we can at least say you’ve seen it.
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (00:53:00):
Yeah, I don’t know. I would’ve to look and see what type of file it is, but happy to take a look.
Whitney McKnight | The Edge (00:53:05):
Okay, I’ve got your address. Thank you. And then the second thing is, is that, at least in some other things that I’ve been investigating, it seems like FOIA staff, the people whose job it is to respond to FOIA requests, it seems like they’re being cut back dramatically. Is there a way to navigate around that and can you help with that? In other words, if it’s taking longer to get back to you about a request, do you have ways to get around the delay because maybe you have connections or something like that?
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (00:53:35):
I don’t think we can get around if there’s not a FOIA person, unfortunately. Yeah, our partners,
Elizabeth Clemons/Sunlight Research Center (00:53:44):
They are experts in FOIA requests, and so it’s great that we’re partnered with them because they would be really helpful for any tips navigating that and potentially having connections with that as well. They would
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (00:53:55):
At least be able to connect you with the right people. For example, if someone leaves and someone new comes in, they would be able to help with that type of transition. But if there’s not someone in the position that’s a little bit harder, but I think they could at least help with connecting you with the new people. So if you want to reach out about both of those things, happy to connect you.
Abbey McDonald | Salem Reporter (00:54:12):
Yeah. Hi, I’m Abbey with Salem Reporter out in Oregon. You talked about the disappearing data sets, which is scary on its own, but I was wondering, just as someone working at a wider lens than me, what kind of new and creative ways are you seeing a lack of transparency from the federal government? We’re all familiar with heavy redactions and things like that, but are you seeing increases in ways that public records are being upheld?
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (00:54:40):
Yes. I’ve seen increases in wait times, but I think a lot of that’s not necessarily deliberate as much as it’s a byproduct of less people being either laid off or cut or leaving. I would say there are data sets literally being cut offline, just disappearing off the websites at a pace. It’s happened before, but at a pace, at a scope that has not happened in the past. I would say data sets are changing in ways where, again, keys to data sets are being removed. It’s not even the data set itself. In some cases it’s the keys to the data sets, so you can’t read it. And so I would say that those are some pretty significant issues. There’s also a wide range of, I would say I could talk about this all day, transparency issues and more of the political sphere. I think that’s probably one of my specialty areas that I could talk about all day. I dunno if you’re more like government, I think side, but there’s also a lot more with that as well. And always happy to chat
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (00:55:50):
About that too. So yeah, if you want any more, and then I’m happy to chat about that, then it would be a longer rant.
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (00:55:59):
Of course. Yeah, feel free to reach out.
Olivia Diaz | Associated Press (00:56:02):
Hello, my name’s Olivia. I work with ap. I’m been digging into a story about lobbyists and who we were working on a government business deal in Virginia, and I’m wondering if there’s any pitfall. I’ve been really going at it through sourcing, but I think turning to FOIA just might be more practical for me at this point. And I’m wondering if you have any advice for just FOIAs in Virginia. Not to put you on the spot, but yes,
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (00:56:35):
I would recommend reaching out to the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism. They do a lot of really great work with that. They’re a small organization. It’s only two or three people but they do really good investigative work and it might be able to help if you ever end up on the campaign side, the Virginia Public Access Project also does some really great stuff, but I would say for the lobbying side, Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism might be helpful. I can’t say I have done much in terms of public records requests in Virginia myself. I’m actually about to move there, so I’m probably going to start, but I’m currently in DC so I just haven’t done as much in Virginia at this point. But I would say certainly they’ll have some good resources. Yeah, I mean lobbying in general. Also, just to actually get back to your question about government data and lack of transparency is another element that I’ve seen rolled back in particular foreign lobbying with the Department of Justice where in many cases it’s not being updated and there are very few accountability mechanisms if someone doesn’t file anymore. And so I think that’s another think to some extent undercover story where filings are not coming not always complete and there’s not as the same emphasis on enforcement that there used to be. So it’s hard to know how much we’re missing. Not to jump around, but that reminded me of it with lobbyists. So thank you and happy to give contact information if you need as well, if you can’t find their contact info, so feel free to reach out.
Mary Steurer | North Dakota Monitor (00:58:13):
Hi, sorry, wait. Olivia, were you done? Okay, I wasn’t sure. Okay. I’m Mary, I’m with the North Dakota Monitor. Thank you for coming to talk to us and thanks for what you do. I was wondering, are there any federal agencies with FOIA offices that you think are run particularly efficiently or seem to be particularly helpful with journalists? I’ve had the experience of trying to put in a FOIA requests and it seems like everyone wants to be helpful, but it still takes months or years to get back. So if there are any that do seem to be more responsive, I know it probably depends on the question, but I’d like to know if there are offices out there that would get back to journalists in an efficient amount of time, I’d be more apt to try to reach out to, it’d be nice to know.
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (00:59:16):
I would love to connect you with the folks at Muck Rock. They’ve got some people who actually look at that type of thing and could look they have on that. I think they processed so many requests they could look and see which agency gets back to people the fastest. I don’t know if that’s something they published on the site, but the very least one of them could probably help tell you that. I don’t know that no off the top of my head or have an example because I feel like I just kind been a mess recently and I feel
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (00:59:40):
Like I can only complain about wait times, but I feel like that’s not helpful here. But I would recommend
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (00:59:45):
Connecting with Muck Rock reaching out and they track so many foyer requests I think that they would have not just one person’s view, but honestly actual numbers on which offices are statistically most likely to get back to you. So I think it’s worth checking with ’em for sure.
Julietta Bisharyan | Modesto Bee (01:00:08):
Hi, I’m Julietta. I’m with the Modesto B in California we have the Public Records Act, so we kind of get or can get records at a quicker turnaround. I was curious for reporters covering local governments, what are some public records you recommend requesting on a regular basis? What specific types of records should we be asking for and monitoring?
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (01:00:37):
Oh, that’s a good question. I would say any conflict of interest forms you can get or personal financial disclosure forms for people like City Council and mayoral can always be interesting. City contracts, if that’s not something that’s already published online, I think can be really interesting to take that a step further if you do find something interesting in the contracts, seeing any correspondence between the office that awarded the contract and the contractor can sometimes be an interesting thing to look at and sometimes even piecing that together with campaign donations sometimes like that. So I would say definitely contracts come up. Any conflicts of interest forms in all cities have them, but some do. And any personal financial disclosures that are or campaign disclosures that are regularly filed by City Council May Oral, anyone else in a major elected office Police chief you, do you have anything to add with that?
Elizabeth Clemons/Sunlight Research Center (01:01:38):
I’ll just add, I think beyond requesting those, it’s really key to compare them to each other over time. In particular, thinking about personal finances and campaign finance, it’s really key to look at over the years, especially if this is a candidate who’s run in the past or held office in the past to compare them to each other and see any changes there. So yeah, make sure you don’t look at things in a vacuum, I guess is what I’d say. Absolutely.
Carmen Russell-Sluchansky | WHYY (01:02:10):
Thanks so much for being here. Carmen Russell-Sluchansky from WHYY News in Philadelphia. So I have a same investigation but kind of two pieces to this that I want to ask about. There is a activist in Pennsylvania who’s right now working on our midterm judicial elections and he, first of all, so he has apparently raised a bunch of money in order to do this and he was in the work last year recruiting, doing voter registration work and stuff like that. Supposedly he received $5 million from Turning Point USA. When I looked in open Secrets, I only see like $60,000 from actually contributed by Turning Point USA. So I don’t know if I can find that other money or if maybe it just didn’t happen. It was a promise. But he’s also a very controversial figure so I wouldn’t be too surprised if they said what
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (01:03:09):
Is his role?
Carmen Russell-Sluchansky | WHYY (01:03:11):
He started early Vote Action. Scott Presler actually kind of a national figure. The other piece of this is that it looks like, so he was living in Virginia, I think coincidentally at some point he moved to Pennsylvania and apparently bought a house. As far as I can tell, he paid cash for the house, which for somebody who was unemployed before he started doing this was a little kind of iffy. We found the house, found the address just outside of Pittsburgh. I got a copy of the deed called the Recorder of Deeds, got a copy of the deed where normally there would be a mortgage holder or whoever, mortgage information. There’s nothing there. The only thing I can think of is to, because I want to see if there’s a mortgage on the house to see if he actually try to figure out if this house was paid for by cash.
(01:04:06):
The only other thing I can think of is title search. So basically the theme of the story is possibly that he’s been raising all this money and he bought a new truck apparently and he’s basically been spending on himself. I mean pretty classic stuff, right? So yeah, I was wondering if number one, is there more that I should be doing to try to verify that he has a mortgage that they paid for it by cash? It’s not like a $2 million mansion either, by the way, but it’s a smaller house but still. And then how else I might be able to find if he’s been getting money through Super pacs as opposed to just regular PAC money or something. However, turning Point USA might have given him that.
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (01:04:49):
Yes, absolutely. So the first thing, and I think you kind of alluded to this at the end, turning Point has so many different nodes in their network that it’s worth checking all of them because they might have given through a different node that is not tracked by Open Secrets. So Open Secrets will have the super PAC and PAC which report to the Federal Election Commission, but they won’t have their nonprofit arms necessarily. And so they have Turning Point USA Turning Point Action, turning Point endowment, and then there’s one more I think. And so all of them kind of funnel money between each other to cover various expenses, a fewer C threes and a fewer C fours. I would recommend getting all of their tax returns. You should be able to find most of those on. ProPublic has nine 90 search, they file on I believe a July to June schedule.
(01:05:40):
So they actually just filed new ones like a month or two ago. If you can’t find those, let me know. I think I actually have copies of them. I was curious and got those a few months ago, so feel free to reach out. I can just send those, the new ones to you. But the nice thing about Form nine 90 is you do have to report top five vendors and you do have to report a decent amount of transaction information and outgoing grants. So it depends how they gave him the money as to whether it’s going to show up in there. If it was a grant to an organization that he’s running, that will definitely show up. But if they’re paying for example, him as a vendor, unless he’s among their top five, over a hundred thousand, they might not show up. There’s a few different places in the nine 90. I would recommend looking definitely top vendors, grants, sometimes fundraisers or transactions with interested persons can sometimes be another one property if they’re just buying the property outright. If that’s a theory. I’m just checking for anything like ownerships. I’m also happy to walk through the nine 90. If you want to reach out, I’m happy to walk you through this as well. Sorry, one really quick. Sure, of course.
Carmen Russell-Sluchansky | WHYY (01:06:55):
You made me think of something else in expenditures. There’s something like the vast majority of the money that they raised that he spent, that he raised and then spent that’s on the records anyway, went to fundraising consulting like the vast majority as opposed to mail. Here’s a little bit of money for mailing. And I’m wondering if he’s the fundraising consultant there if you think that could be the way that,
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (01:07:19):
That’s interesting. Do they list a firm that they paid the fundraising consulting firm, like who they paid for?
Carmen Russell-Sluchansky | WHYY (01:07:26):
I guess I probably have to get the actual form as I’m just looking at the top lines of,
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (01:07:30):
Yeah, you would’ve to look at the actual expenditures, but it might be worth checking that. And then when you see who the fund, what firm is listed, you can then pull the incorporation record for that firm. Open Corporates is a great tool for that and you can, or if you know what state it’s incorporated and you can just search it generally. But the nice thing about Open Corp is it searches all the states and you can see if he is officially tied to it, but there’s also other ways he could be loosely tied. So it’s definitely worth checking that that would not be unheard of for a political group to pay someone through consulting firm. Absolutely. And yeah, happy to help with any of that as well. That sounds really interesting. Of course. Yeah, I would start with the nine nineties for the payment though, definitely. And the expenditures for the other part.
Kevin Johnson/NPF (01:08:19):
Well, our time has quickly run out on us and I know that there were some slides that may have been difficult to read, but we’ll make sure to get them to folks thank you and so that they can get the full measure of what you presented. I also am glad to see that many connections in the room you’ll be following up with I’m sure. And we thank you for sharing this with us and thank you for working with them as they bring questions to you down the road.
Anna Massoglia/Sunlight Research Center (01:08:51):
Oh, thank you so much. And please if anyone has follow-up questions or if we didn’t get around to you or if you just have follow-ups, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I love doing this type of stuff as you can probably tell. So always happy to help however I can.
Kevin Johnson/NPF (01:09:03):
Please join me in thanking Anna and Elizabeth.
