The officials’ money, on the public record.

The rules in plain English

The Ethics in Government Act of 1978 requires senior federal officials to file annual financial disclosure reports covering assets, income, liabilities, gifts, and travel reimbursements. The STOCK Act of 2012 added securities-transaction reporting on top: members of Congress, senior congressional staff, executive branch officials, and judicial officers must report securities transactions over $1,000 on Periodic Transaction Reports (PTRs) within 30 days of notification of the transaction and no later than 45 days after the transaction itself.

Annual reports disclose holdings in broad amount ranges, not exact dollar values. Only the reports of members themselves are publicly inspectable; the reports of congressional officers and covered staff are not, under federal law (5 U.S.C. 13107).

Congress: two databases, two standards

The House and Senate run separate disclosure systems with very different public usability, and the reason is a story in itself. The original STOCK Act required a single searchable, sortable, downloadable database of congressional disclosures with no login. A 2013 amendment (P.L. 113-7) removed that requirement, leaving each chamber to build its own system.

Usage restrictions apply: federal law (5 U.S.C. 13107(c)) bars commercial use of the filings except by news media for public dissemination, bars use for credit-rating purposes, and bars solicitation. Editorial use like the Ledger’s falls under the news-media exception.

The executive branch: OGE Form 278e

Senior executive branch officials file OGE Form 278e, the public financial disclosure report covering assets, income, transactions, gifts and travel reimbursements, liabilities, agreements, and outside positions. It is filed on entry into covered service, annually by May 15, and on termination. STOCK Act transaction reporting uses OGE Form 278-T under the same 30-day notification and 45-day outer-limit rule that applies to Congress. Electronic filing runs through OGE’s Integrity system.

The public-facing side is weaker than the congressional side. OGE’s public system is effectively a document-request service rather than a machine-readable database, covering roughly 1,000 officials at the top of the Executive Schedule plus presidential nominees. By law, reports are destroyed after six years, so the historical record continuously erodes. Independent parsed datasets partly fill the gap: DisclosedCapitol publishes an open dataset of executive-branch trades parsed from the filings (over 36,000 transactions, refreshed nightly), and Open Cabinet runs a tracker that flags late filings.

The judiciary: the least-known database

The Courthouse Ethics and Transparency Act requires federal judges, including bankruptcy and magistrate judges, to file PTRs for securities transactions over $1,000 within 45 days, for transactions on or after August 11, 2022. The judiciary runs a free searchable database at pub.jefs.uscourts.gov (the Judiciary Electronic Filing System public portal). Reports from calendar year 2022 onward are posted in full-text searchable, sortable, downloadable form within 90 days of the filing deadline. Like the executive branch, reports are destroyed after six years. This is the newest disclosure system in the federal government and the least covered by existing trackers.

Travel and gifts: the parallel paper trail

Privately sponsored travel has its own disclosure track, separate from securities reporting, and it is more timely than trade data. In the House, members, officers, and staff who accept privately funded travel connected to official duties must file a post-travel disclosure packet with the Clerk within 15 days after travel ends (House Rule XXV, clause 5). The filed packets, which include the sponsor’s own disclosure form, itineraries, and the Ethics Committee approval letter, are posted publicly as PDFs. In the Senate, a post-travel package goes to the Secretary of the Senate within 30 days of the last day of travel (Senate Rule XXXV).

For Ledger purposes, the travel packets are the richer vein than gift tallies: they name the sponsor, the destination, the dates, and the stated purpose, in the traveler’s own filing, within days or weeks of the trip. Gifts sit under the same ethics rules (annual disclosure above statutory thresholds; gifts from registered lobbyists are banned), and executive branch officials report gifts and travel reimbursements on OGE Form 278e.

Aggregators: useful tools, not primary sources

Because the official systems are fragmented, private aggregators repackage the filings. Capitol Trades offers a free public interface searchable by politician, ticker, party, chamber, and state. Quiver Quantitative has a free tier with congressional trading data and a premium tier adding portfolios and alerts. Unusual Whales bundles politician trade data inside its retail plan. OpenSecrets complements trade data with campaign finance and lobbying records. On the executive side, DisclosedCapitol and Open Cabinet parse OGE filings into searchable trade datasets. None of these are primary sources: they repackage the official filings with varying lag and varying ticker mapping. When it matters, check the filing itself.

How to read a disclosure without being misled

These are the rules we apply to every disclosure story, and you should too:

• Ranges, not dollars. Filings show value ranges, never exact amounts. Any per-trade dollar figure from a tracker is an estimate, usually the range midpoint.
• The 45-day lag means nothing is real time. A trade can be six weeks old before it appears. Treat “real-time” alerts accordingly.
• Spousal trades read as the filer’s trades. By law, a spouse’s or dependent’s independent trade is attributed to the filer.
• Late filing proves nothing about intent. Late filing is common. It is a compliance fact, not evidence of motive.
• Blind spots are structural. Non-blind family trusts and assets held outside the reporting regime do not appear.
• Appearance is not evidence. A trade adjacent to committee action is a coincidence until proven otherwise. None of the filings show motive.

The academic record is a useful anchor. Pre-2012 studies found congressional portfolios beating the market; post-STOCK-Act studies find no outperformance. The honest line: evidence of systematic market-beating is thin after disclosure tightened, while the appearance problem keeps the issue alive.

Sources

• House financial disclosure database: disclosures-clerk.house.gov
• Senate financial disclosure search: efdsearch.senate.gov
• Judiciary disclosures (JEFS): pub.jefs.uscourts.gov
• Office of Government Ethics: oge.gov
• House post-travel packets: disclosures-clerk.house.gov/gtimages
• STOCK Act transaction reporting rules: CRS R48641; financial disclosure requirements: CRS R47320