How this site works, where everything comes from, and how to reach us when we get something wrong.
The Wire & Ledger is a news aggregator. It gathers headlines from 22 news outlets across the political spectrum, from Fox News and Breitbart to the Guardian, Al Jazeera and the Jerusalem Post, and links to the original stories. The reporting belongs to those outlets. We do not write news stories.
Alongside the headlines, the site compiles public records: Justice Department case announcements, federal inspector-general reports, Treasury and spending data, and event data for protests, riots and conflict. Those sections are our compilation of official records, and we are responsible for getting them right.
No ads. Not affiliated with any outlet, party or government agency. Nothing here is legal, financial or investment advice.
Stories are ranked by how many different outlets are covering them, weighted toward the newest (the weight halves every 8 hours). The banner is the top-ranked story that has a photo. No story is picked or placed by hand.
Headlines appear as each outlet wrote them. A story's photo is taken only from that story or from a closely matching headline about the same event.
A charge is an accusation, not a finding of guilt. Everyone listed as charged is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in court.
Dollar amounts are the figures stated in the official announcement, such as loss, restitution or settlement amounts. When several defendants share one scheme, the scheme total is counted once. District copies of national enforcement sweeps are listed but left out of the totals so nothing is counted twice.
Where the records come from: U.S. Department of Justice press releases; HHS Office of Inspector General enforcement actions, audits and Medicaid Fraud Control Unit statistics; Treasury FiscalData; GAO reports; USAspending.gov; and the Treasury OFAC sanctions list. Every case links to its official source.
Outcomes we can miss. Cases are updated when DOJ announces a later stage, such as a plea, conviction or sentence. DOJ does not always announce dismissals, acquittals or reversals on appeal, so the site may not reflect them. If you know of one, please tell us and include a link to the court record; we will update or remove the entry.
Map events come from the GDELT Project, which uses software to code events from news reports worldwide. That coding is often wrong: a 2016 study in Science (Wang et al.) found that only about 21% of GDELT’s protest records pointed to real protests. Places with less press coverage are under-counted, and reports that only name a country are placed at its center.
So the map does not take the codes at face value:
Group lookups show what public records list about an organization: sanctions, terrorist designations, foreign-agent filings and IRS nonprofit filings. Appearing in a lookup, or in a news report about an event, does not mean an organization or person did anything wrong.
How often it updates. Headlines refresh about every 30 minutes. The map covers the last 6 hours of reports and rebuilds every hour. Like a governor valve, it speeds up to every 15 minutes when reports in the last hour are running well above the earlier average, and slows to every 2 hours when things are quiet. The current setting is shown above the map.
We want this to be accurate. If you see a wrong figure, a wrong label, a case outcome we missed, or a headline matched to the wrong photo, email randy@barnhillig.com with the subject Correction. Please include:
We check every request against the source and fix confirmed errors as quickly as we can. Significant corrections to the money section are listed here.
Corrections log: none yet.
Headlines and photos belong to the outlets and photographers who created them. Photos are shown from the image each outlet publishes in its own news feed. They load from the outlet's servers, and this site does not keep copies. Each photo is credited and links to the original story.
If you own a photo or text shown here and want it removed, email randy@barnhillig.com with the subject Takedown, a link to the page, and which item it is. We remove it promptly, usually within two business days, and no further steps are needed.
The Wire & Ledger is built and run by Randy Barnhill, an engineering technician and founder of Industrial AI Consulting. It was built with AI: Randy designed and steered it, and Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic, wrote the code under his direction. The judgment calls about what to show and how to label it are his.
Contact: randy@barnhillig.com