A Field Guide for Open-Source Investigators
The Epstein files are out. Three million documents. And the conversation happening around them is almost entirely about what's in the files — not about what's still running right now. This site, and the workbook it goes with, is about the part nobody's looking at.
What's inside
"The moment you publish something you cannot source, you've handed the people you are investigating a weapon they will use against you."
— From the workbook, Chapter 1What this is
Every tool in this workbook is free or low-cost and publicly available to anyone with an internet connection. No press credentials. No expensive database subscriptions. The Epstein files are public. Court records are public. UK Companies House is public. ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer is public. What most people don't have is the method — how to use all of that in a way that produces findings you can actually publish without getting destroyed in the process.
I built this because people kept asking me how. Every week since The Machine series started, someone finds me with a version of the same question: where do you look, how do you know what's real, how do you document it in a way that holds up? This is the answer, written down so you can use it.
A 100-page field guide covering court records, corporate filings, social media investigation, identity verification, pre-publication standards, and how to submit documented findings to Congress and federal agencies. Print it, spiral-bind it, and use it alongside this site.
Every tool in the workbook is maintained here — updated when URLs change, when platforms update their interfaces, or when something better comes along. The book gives you the foundation. This keeps it from going stale.
The congressional contact tool. The FBI tip portal. Submission templates formatted to include EFTA document numbers, court docket numbers, and archive links — the format that gets read. Documented findings deserve to reach people with subpoena power.
Where this comes from
The Machine series is where this workbook comes from. Every technique in it — the Companies House searches, the PACER pulls, the 990 analysis, the social media documentation standards, the federal conviction record research — was developed and tested against an actual investigation that produced twenty-two published parts of named, sourced findings. The workbook is that method, written down.
Everything it takes to find, document, verify, and publish findings about the network operating against Epstein survivors — using public records, free tools, and the investigative method behind The Machine series. The suggested price is $10. Pay what you feel it's worth. If you want to give more, that's welcomed — this investigation has real costs.
The suggested price is $10. Use the Buy Me a Coffee link to pay what you feel it's worth. The work matters more than the transaction.
Suggested Price
Pay what you feel this work is worth
Download the Workbook Support This Work — ☕Proceeds support The Machine investigation. If you want to give more than $10, give more — this work has real costs and it's ongoing.
What's inside
Part One
The investigator mindset. The difference between a lead and a fact. The three evidence categories — Confirmed, Alleged, Unverified — that you use on everything you research. Device security, browser setup, VPN basics. What to do when someone sends a cease-and-desist. How to archive everything before you publish anything.
Part Two
PACER, CourtListener, and state courts. UK Companies House and US state registries — how to find co-directors, shareholders, and corporate histories that subjects don't publicize. ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer and what a 990 actually tells you. Government databases — BOP, FEC, FAA, FOIA. The Epstein files specifically: all three repositories, EFTA document numbering, citation standards, and what the files don't contain.
Part Three
Platform-by-platform documentation guide. How to map a network through public interactions — who consistently amplifies whom, who defends whom unprompted, language replication as evidence of coordination. Advanced search operators for X, Google, Telegram, and Gab. How to find deleted content. Identity verification from primary sources up.
Part Four
Building a subject file with the folder structure that actually works six months in. Writing about what you find — attribution, how to report on allegations without liability, the pre-publication checklist. Working with co-investigators and protecting sources. Submitting documented findings to Congress, the FBI, and the DOJ in the format that gets read.
Part Five
The complete tool directory — 25+ tools with URLs, costs, and best use cases, maintained at followthefiles.com/tools. A full glossary of legal, corporate, and investigative terms. Five quick-reference cards designed to print and keep at your desk while you work.
Part Six
The files versus the machine. What the public conversation got right and what it's missing entirely. Why independent open-source investigators can see things that institutional media hasn't caught. What it will actually take to make a dent in the network that is still running. In my voice, nothing hedged.
Living Tool Directory
These tools were verified March 2026. Check this page before relying on any link from the workbook. If something is broken or outdated, the current version is always here first.
Court Records
Corporate Records
Nonprofit & Tax Records
Government Databases
Epstein Files
Archiving
Identity Verification
Secure Communication & Legal Resources
Why This Site Exists
Three million documents released. And most of the conversation since then has been about what's in them — not about what's happening right now to the people who put Maxwell away.
When the DOJ released over three million pages of Epstein documents in January 2026, the conversation that followed was enormous and it was legitimate. Accountability for the people who were part of that network is the whole point. But somewhere in all of it, something got missed.
The people who put Maxwell in prison are being harassed right now. Not in the past — right now, as you read this. The operation running against them doesn't operate from the flight logs or the contact books. It operates from X/Twitter, from Telegram, from Substack. The people behind it have verified checkmarks and large audiences and documentary deals and podcast appearances. Some of them are named by name in federal witness harassment complaints released as part of the same file dump that everyone is reading for celebrity names. Most people who are paying close attention to the files have not opened those documents.
That gap — between what the files contain and what the files also contain — is what The Machine series at thefalloutwithtbs.substack.com documents. Twenty-two parts of sourced, named, citable reporting on specific people doing specific things. Not theory, not pattern-matching. Documented record: WhatsApp messages, Companies House filings, federal conviction records, BOP Register numbers, ProPublica 990s, DOJ documents with EFTA designations. All of it public. All of it findable by anyone who knew where to look and how to document what they found.
The institutional media has largely failed this story. Not because journalists are corrupt, but because it requires sustained, technical, detailed work that doesn't fit a news cycle and doesn't produce a clean headline without a lot of context most outlets won't provide. What it requires is exactly what the workbook teaches: the ability to read a Companies House filing and a federal conviction record and a ProPublica 990 and a series of archived social media posts and understand how they connect to each other. None of that requires credentials. It requires a method and the discipline to follow the evidence rather than the conclusion.
The people running these operations count on the people paying attention being disorganized, undisciplined, and easy to discredit. One misidentification, one claim you published without being able to source — and they use it to attack everything else. The method in this workbook is specifically designed to make that harder.
People are waiting for a moment that resolves everything. A final document release, an arrest, a hearing that changes the whole picture. That moment may come. But what two years of this investigation has actually shown is that what moves things is accumulated pressure from documented findings — congressional submissions that cite EFTA numbers and docket numbers, independent researchers adding to a record that eventually becomes impossible to ignore. That's what the Take Action page is for. That's what Chapter 16 of the workbook is for.
Read the full investigation
The Machine — Twenty-Two Parts at The Fallout with TBS
thefalloutwithtbs.substack.com
Survivor resources and congressional contact
grifter-nation.com · grifter-nation.help
Tools, resources, and the congressional contact tool
Take Action
The most common question from people who've been following this investigation: What do I do with what I found?
You submit it. Not because you expect a callback. Not because you trust the institutions to act on their own. But because every documented, sourced submission that reaches a congressional office creates a paper trail — and paper trails are what congressional investigations draw on when they decide what is worth pursuing with a subpoena. A submission that cites EFTA document numbers, court docket numbers, and archived URLs is a different kind of document than a constituent complaint. It builds a record. Over time, across multiple independent researchers, that record becomes difficult to ignore.
The congressional contact tool at grifter-nation.com has direct contact information and submission templates formatted for this purpose. Use it alongside this page and the submission builder below.
House Committee
House Judiciary Committee
judiciary.house.gov
House Committee
House Oversight & Accountability Committee
oversight.house.gov
Senate Committee
Senate Judiciary Committee
judiciary.senate.gov
Federal Agency
FBI Online Tip Portal
tips.fbi.gov
Your Representatives
Find Your House Member & Senator
house.gov · senate.gov
Full Contact Tool + Templates
grifter-nation.com
Direct links, formatted templates, submission guidance
Fill in what you have. Hit the button. A formatted submission template copies to your clipboard.
Generates a formatted template for your clipboard. Nothing entered here is stored or transmitted — it stays in your browser only.
Worksheet Downloads
Click any worksheet to open it, fill it in your browser, and print it. The full workbook PDF is also available to download and print all 27 worksheets at once.
1.1Free
Write your rules before you begin any investigation — your sourcing standard, ethical lines, what you will and won't publish.
Open & Fill In
2.1Free
Browser, VPN, archive tools, legal resources — check everything off before starting any investigation.
Open & Fill In
3.1Free
A running log for everything you archive — URL, content, archive link, and local file status.
Open & Fill In
2.2Free
Attorney contact, RCFP number, and exactly what to do if a legal threat arrives. Fill out before you publish.
Open & Fill In
4.1 & 4.2Free
Track every case. Break down any docket with a consistent framework that holds up six months later.
Open & Fill In
5.1 & 5.2Free
Track every entity you find and draw the documented connections between subjects.
Open & Fill In
6.1Free
Revenue by year, compensation, donor disclosure, net assets — one sheet per organization.
Open & Fill In
7.1 & 7.2Free
Run through every database systematically. Track every FOIA request from submission to outcome.
Open & Fill In
8.1 & 8.2Free
Track searches across all three repositories. Build a documented subject profile from the files.
Open & Fill In
9.1 & 9.2Free
One row per platform. Full documentation standard for every post you plan to cite in published work.
Open & Fill In
10.1 & 10.2Free
Log every documented connection. Draw the full network with sources on every line.
Open & Fill In
11–16Free
All remaining worksheets from Parts Three, Four, and Six of the workbook.
Open & Fill In
FAQ
Everything in this workbook uses publicly available information accessed through legitimate means — court databases, government registries, public social media, official archives. Using public information for investigative purposes is legal. Nothing here instructs or encourages hacking, unauthorized access to private systems, harassment, or anything illegal. If you're uncertain about the legality of something specific in your jurisdiction, talk to an attorney before you do it.
Yes, if you follow the standards in the workbook. Truth is an absolute defense to defamation. Accurate reporting on matters of public concern, using properly sourced public records, with allegations clearly labeled as allegations, is protected speech in the United States. The risks come from publishing unverified claims as fact, misidentifying someone, or publishing private information that isn't actually in public records. The pre-publication checklist in Chapter 14 is designed to keep you on the right side of all of that. When something feels uncertain before publication, call the RCFP at 1-800-336-4243 before pressing publish.
Do not delete anything. Deleting content after receiving a legal threat can be used against you in ways that are worse than the threat itself. Screenshot the threat, save the email, note the exact date and time. Do not respond without talking to an attorney or calling the RCFP first — their legal defense hotline is 1-800-336-4243. Most threats in this space are never followed by actual lawsuits. They are designed to make you stop. Document the threat, evaluate your work against the standards in the workbook, and if the work is sound, keep going.
The Machine is the name I use for the documented network operating to rehabilitate Ghislaine Maxwell's public image and attack the credibility of Epstein survivors. It is documented in twenty-two published parts at thefalloutwithtbs.substack.com. The workbook teaches the methods used in that investigation, but they work for any open-source investigation — not just this one. The Machine context page on this site gives the fuller explanation of what the network is and why this lane of investigation matters.
No. I'm not a trained journalist. I built every method in this workbook by doing the investigation. What it takes is patience, a willingness to use public databases, and the discipline to verify before publishing. None of that requires a degree or a press credential. It requires practice and the habit of following the evidence rather than deciding in advance where it leads.
Yes. The PDF downloads directly from this site with no gate. The suggested price is $10 — use the Buy Me a Coffee link on the workbook page to pay what you feel it's worth. If you want to give more than $10, do that. This investigation has real ongoing costs and that support goes directly to it. But the workbook itself is not behind a paywall. Download it, use it, share it with anyone who would find it useful.
The workbook PDF downloads directly from this site — no payment required to access it. Support for this investigation goes through Buy Me a Coffee at buymeacoffee.com/troybarile. The suggested price is $10. If you want to give more, that's welcomed — the investigation is ongoing and every dollar goes to records, databases, research tools, and legal costs. Use the "Support This Work" button on the workbook page.
The workbook is a fixed document — the foundation. This site is what keeps it current. URLs change. Tools update. New resources come along. Every tool in Chapter 17 is maintained here. The Updates page logs anything that has changed since publication. The free worksheets open directly in your browser. The congressional submission builder is here. Use both together — the book tells you what to do, this site makes sure the tools you're doing it with still work.
Updates
Broken link? Changed interface? New tool worth adding? This is where it shows up first.
followthefiles.com is live. All 27 worksheets are now unlocked and openable directly in your browser — fill them in, print them, use them. The full workbook PDF is available to download from the Workbook page. All tools in Chapter 17 verified as of launch date.
How to Follow the Machine: A Field Guide for Open-Source Investigators is available as a free PDF download. Suggested support price is $10 via Buy Me a Coffee. 22 chapters, 27 worksheets, 25+ tools. Print it and spiral-bind it.
The tool directory is reviewed regularly. If you find a broken link in the workbook, check the Tools page — the current URL will be listed there. If a tool has gone down or a better alternative exists, it gets logged here with the date.
About
Investigative Journalist · The Fallout with TBS
I'm an investigative journalist and the author of The Machine, a twenty-two-part series documenting the network operating to rehabilitate Ghislaine Maxwell's public image and attack the credibility of Epstein survivors. The series is published at thefalloutwithtbs.substack.com and has reached readers across more than thirty countries. I'm a regular contributor to WhoWhatWhy.org.
I'm not a trained journalist. I built every method in this workbook by doing the investigation — pulling court filings, corporate records, federal conviction databases, social media archives, and DOJ EFTA documents until the pattern became visible and documentable. That work produced twenty-two published parts of named, sourced findings and a formal evidentiary submission delivered to congressional offices.
I run grifter-nation.com, which houses the congressional contact tool, investigative resources, and documentation of the ongoing operation. I run grifter-nation.help, which is a survivor support and resource directory. followthefiles.com and the workbook exist because the tools and methods behind The Machine series should not stay with one person. If you can use them to add something to the documented record, use them.
The Full Ecosystem
Twenty-two parts of documented reporting. The investigation that produced the method in this workbook. Free to read.
thefalloutwithtbs.substack.comInvestigative resources, the congressional contact tool, and ongoing documentation of active operations.
grifter-nation.comSurvivor support and resource directory. If you or someone you know needs support, start here.
grifter-nation.help