Press & Media
GRIFTR
A free, nonpartisan tool that maps the financial relationships between money and Congress.
GRIFTR cross-references five domains of congressional financial activity — campaign finance, lobbying exposure, stock trading, revolving door dynamics, and voting records — into a single representative profile. Every data point links directly to the underlying government filing.
By the Numbers
Key Findings
100% PhRMA capture of Energy & Commerce
All 54 members of the House Energy & Commerce Committee share the same #1 lobbying client — Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. Zero exceptions, across both parties.
AIPAC reaches 34% of Congress
184 members (94R, 90D) show AIPAC-related lobbying as their top client — the broadest single-organization penetration in the dataset.
Committee assignment determines lobbying exposure, not party
Financial entanglement tracks committee jurisdiction, not ideology or individual fundraising choices. The same pattern holds across Democrats and Republicans on identical committees.
Financial entanglement is orthogonal to partisanship
Cross-party cosponsorship rates are statistically identical (~50%) regardless of FEI score. High financial entanglement does not predict partisan behavior.
What Makes GRIFTR Different
GRIFTR is the only free public platform that combines five domains of congressional financial activity in one place and computes a composite score across all of them.
The Financial Entanglement Index (FEI) quantifies how financially intertwined each member of Congress is with outside interests — as a percentile rank within their chamber. No other public platform computes this metric. A high FEI reflects committee power, seniority, and the flow of outside money, not evidence of wrongdoing.
All data comes exclusively from official government sources: FEC, Congress.gov, Senate LDA, House Clerk, and Census. Every figure links to the underlying filing.
Data Sources
Federal Election Commission (FEC)
Campaign contributions, PAC activity, independent expenditures — 2024 cycle
Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA)
Registered lobbyist filings, client spending, issue area disclosures, revolving door data
Methodology
The FEI is a percentile-based composite across six components: campaign finance, lobbying exposure, stock trading activity, revolving door dynamics, independent expenditures, and bill exposure. Each component is scored as a percentile rank within the member's chamber.
Lobbying exposure is attributed via committee jurisdiction — reflecting the lobbying pressure a member faces based on their committee assignments, not direct payments. This is a deliberate design choice: direct payments to members are illegal; the mechanism of influence is through policy jurisdiction.
Full methodology: griftr.us/about
Downloadable Data
Derived from public federal records. Please cite GRIFTR (griftr.us) when using this data in published work.
For Journalists
Every representative profile links directly to the underlying government filings for every data point. If you're covering a specific representative, committee, or industry influence story, profiles include FEC filing links, LDA lobbying filings, and STOCK Act transaction reports.
Embed links: any representative profile can be linked directly at griftr.us/rep/[bioguideId]. BioGuide IDs are the standard congressional identifier from Congress.gov.
Story tip
Run the FEI leaderboard filtered by committee to see which members in a given policy area have the highest financial entanglement scores — a useful starting point for industry influence stories.Media Contact
Press inquiries
For data requests, story collaboration, methodology questions, or press inquiries, use the contact form. Include "Press" in the subject line for faster routing.