ProPublica has consistently delivered some of the best investigative journalism on politics, government, and social justice since its founding in 2007. In addition to stellar reporting, ProPublica has often created and shared public databases and tools for others to delve deeply into matters of public concern.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning organization has continued its service to the public with a new feature. It will help other journalists, researchers, interested citizens, and Bob Mueller’s investigators explore the professional backgrounds, finances, and affiliations of many of the people Trump has appointed to government positions. Their rationale for this project is pretty simple:
While lobbying and financial information on political appointees is required to be released by law, federal agencies are not allowed to make this information searchable. So we did.
There’s a nice introductory page that explains what ProPublica has created and how to use it at Here’s How You Can Use Trump Town. The authors highlight some of the key items that one may find and how to further investigate them using external tools. For example, one can discover which companies have ex-employees working in an agency with whom the company currently has a federal contract.
Trump Town is a searchable database of 2,684 Trump administration political appointees, including their jobs and offices, employment history, lobbying records, government ethics documents and financial disclosures. We made the data available and easy to use so journalists and researchers can use it in their work.
You can search the database by the name of appointee, by the name of the agency or office, or by former employers. Everything is cross-linked so if, for example, you look up a staff member and find she worked for a particular company, you can click the company name to see if it has more former employees working in other government agencies.
Here is a cropped screenshot when I searched for “Koch.” Trump Town showed me several results, one of which was “Koch Industries.”
I clicked the linked item on the left side to find former Koch employees whom Trump had placed in the EPA, as shown in this screenshot.
Notice that Erik Baptist, the third entry, has an ethics waiver highlighted. Well, that caught my eye so I had to check him out.
Clicking the “Ethics Waiver” link in the pink bar opened a viewer for a file, a PDF of the actual waiver, stored at documentcloud.org.
Be forewarned: if you search for Jared or Ivanka, you may waste half a day. Their financial information on Trump Town goes on forever. The folks at ProPublica have done an outstanding job. Just piecing together that crazy-quilt of financial ties and interests should merit sending a few dollars their way (ProPublica is a non-profit, so donations help a lot).