CapitolExposed is a public-interest reporting project focused on Congress, with Washington state records published in a separate state section. This page explains how evidence is handled before it appears on the site.
Published claims should trace back to official filings, government databases, court records, company filings, or clearly identified primary-source material.
Most of the site is generated from the filings themselves: trade pages, late-disclosure counts, weekly roundups and contract leads are built by code from the records and checked by automated validators that withhold anything they cannot match to its source. They are not individually reviewed by an editor, which is why they state only what the records establish and say nothing they cannot verify.
We publish claims a reader can check against a public record: the trades, late disclosures, and federal contract leads that pass checks against their sources. We stopped publishing the conflict score on October 3, 2026, because its committee, sector and vote matching could not be verified. Since the same date we do not publish name matches against outside databases such as offshore leak files, foreign-agent registrations or sanctions lists: a record is tied to a member only through an identifier both carry. None of this is an accusation of illegality or proof of insider trading.
Material corrections should be noted on the affected page, not quietly overwritten. Source-data issues and editorial errors are documented distinctly.
CapitolExposed does not treat the timing of a trade, a committee seat, a campaign receipt or a lobbying filing as proof of wrongdoing. Each is a fact about a public record, shown beside the trade so a reader can check it.
A record that shares only a name with a member is not tied to that member and is not published. Investigations should avoid overstating certainty, especially with incomplete source records. When uncertainty remains, the page should say so directly.