Knowledge is power. Here's how to uncover hidden information on the competition. And make sure you know everything they may find on your candidate.
don’t be surprised in a political campaign. check the opposition candidate’s background with these professional investor tips.
It happens every election cycle. Some piece of information from a candidate's past is revealed, damaging their chances of winning and changing the outcome of an election. An embarrassing photo, a careless college social media post, membership in an unpopular organization, financial connections unknown to the voting public.
In today's super-heated political climate, everything is fair game. We work with campaigns and consultants nationwide on opposition research as well as candidate background screening. We offer the following tips and tricks to make sure your campaign is the one on offense in this high stakes game:
Use free background check sites and apps. Sites such as Intelius (www.intlius.com) and TruthFinder.com (www.truthfinder.com) are among many "free" background check websites, which charge fees to receive information. These websites are fine for general, unverified information such as current and former residences, household members, etc. These sites claim have all types of criminal records and more, but the sites are really designed to help online daters screen potential Romeos, so don't expect to learn much more than your opposition's actual age and whether he's secretly living with his mother. Also note, much of the information is out of date or incorrect, as there is no verification of the information or the source from which it has been gathered. Nevertheless, it's a low-cost way to at least establish residency, uncover any major criminal cases and start a dossier.
Explore campaign contributions. Start with the Federal Election Commission (FEC): https://www.fec.gov/data/browse-data/?tab=filings Browse "all filings" for the subject's name (either as candidate or donor). Look for contributors to certain candidates that show up consistently and/or in large amounts --and also look at what campaigns the candidates are contributing to. Hint: you won't find the KKK contributing to your opposition. But a registered PI has the tools and access to be able to run all the contributors to a campaign against other known aliases, to reveal who or what groups/companies might actually be behind that steady stream of random donations between $50-$150. You'll find the same information for state and county elections for most states at that state’s Secretary of State website.
Find out if your opposition has been an officer or director of a corporation or LLC. Search opencorporates.com. Where do their interests lie? Have they been a director or officer of a company in a questionable industry? You'll find this at the Secretary of State website for each individual state or on OpenCorporates.com (incomplete, but a good place to find out what states a candidate might have interests in). Some states allow you to run this by officer name, others you'll need to know the name of the corporation for the search.
Check for federal cases including criminal, civil and bankruptcy for individuals and companies. Go To Pacer.gov. You'll find a nominal fee for searching nationwide data on cases involving entities of interest, with some federal district court cases going back to the 1980's. Undisclosed bankruptcy from 1992? Named in a RICO case in 1987? Many individuals assume their background fades as time passes, and politicians are no exception. This site can help bring the past to light.
Check their education. DegreeVerify.com. You'd be shocked how many people exaggerate or outright lie about their education. Listing degrees from foreign universities (harder to track) is a common tactic among young professionals looking for an edge. However that white lie from 30 years ago got carried along from job to job and is now part of their public profile. Finding out that they didn’t actually play Division I volleyball, didn't actually receive that MBA from Wharton or didn't even attend that university in Lucerne, Switzerland could make an opposition candidate rethink their run.
Bonus: Old websites, blogs and media. The Wayback machine (https://archive.org/web) allows you to find online content dating back to...the beginning of the internet. You can find old material that doesn't show up anymore in Google searches. You'll need to search by publication, by date--unfortunately no keyword search tool here.
Pro Tip: If you’ve done all this and are ready to take your opposition research to the next level, contact us. We can uncover litigation at the state level (requires a private investigator license), expose deep social media, dark web (including emails you didn't know exist), employment verifications, liens, assets, judgements and financial records, social affiliations and more.