Terrorism professor by day, legal reporter by night, Seamus Hughes is the journalist America needs right now
The Court Watch founder has been called the “the no shit, uncontested expert” on federal court filings, and his discoveries have broken hundreds of big stories. But can he make covering crime pay?
When Seamus Hughes discovered that Julian Assange had been secretly indicted by the U.S. government, he didn’t immediately recognize it as a major scoop. He’d been casually scrolling through court documents after reading Dragons Love Tacos to his kids, when he noticed something odd: a routine sexual exploitation case in the Eastern District of Virginia had two national security prosecutors attached to it. Clicking through the filing, he found a copy-paste error on one page that revealed prosecutors’ attempts to keep Assange’s indictment sealed. Hughes tweeted it out, went to bed, and woke up to find his discovery on the front page of TheWashington Post.
It’s typical of Hughes’s unusual career and the precarious state of court reporting in America. A terrorism scholar by training, Hughes has spent years developing an uncanny mastery of the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) — the federal court system’s notoriously difficult database. That made him what former Rolling Stone editor Noah Shachtman calls “the no shit, uncontested expert” on federal court filings. His discoveries have broken hundreds of national stories, from a Coast Guard officer’s assassination plot to corruption investigations of LA City Council members. In 2022, he was part of a New York Times team that won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on law enforcement in America.
Three years ago, Hughes turned his PACER obsession into Court Watch, a newsletter that covers the overlooked corners of the federal court system. But despite breaking story after story — often scooping major outlets with far more resources — Court Watch is struggling financially. Hughes recently revealed the publication is “dangerously close” to being unsustainable, losing more paid subscribers than it gains each month. It’s a tension that captures independent journalism’s current moment: Court Watch has become essential infrastructure for legal reporting, yet it operates on a shoestring budget. Hughes works from his home in the Washington, D.C. area, where he’s also a professor at the University of Nebraska Omaha’s National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center.
In this edition of Depth Perception, we speak with Hughes about how reading court documents became his form of “mental floss” from studying neo-Nazis and ISIS, why he keeps training journalists who could theoretically replace him, and what it’s like breaking major stories that don’t always earn attribution — or income. —Parker Molloy
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How did you get into journalism?
It’s all over the place, bizarre. I am a terrorism scholar by trade, so I track every Tom, Dick, and Harry who wants to kill us — white supremacists, neo-Nazis, ISIS, al-Qaeda, that kind of thing — anything there’s an American nexus to.
About eight or nine years ago, I was trying to figure out how many guys have been arrested for ISIS-related activities in the U.S. I could not rely on the DOJ’s press releases to tell me the full story because they’d hide the ball or they didn’t like the sentencing or the guy flipped. So I had to go through 94 different federal districts to find every case, and I’d find 20 to 30 to 40 cases that were just sitting there.
As I was doing that, I would come across stuff that had nothing to do with terrorism that I found interesting but wasn’t my beat, for lack of a better word. So I would just tweet it out — like half the LA City Council on the take, or Julian Assange under indictment. I would just tweet it out and be like, “Listen, this is not my area of expertise, but enjoy.”
After a while, I got kind of annoyed that things I thought were interesting weren’t getting picked up. So I slid into Noah Shachtman’s DMs at TheDaily Beast and I was like, “Listen Noah, I’m not a journalist. I didn’t go to J-school, I didn’t cut my teeth on a local paper, but I think there are good stories I’m finding and I think they should be told.”
Noah, to his credit, took a flier on me and basically assigned me with another reporter, and we would just knock out pieces together. I would learn the process of like, “Okay, this is how you write a lede, and this is how you write a kicker.”
Then about six years ago, a bunch of New York Times reporters rallied together and pitched the editor at the D.C. bureau and said, “This silly academic in Nebraska keeps scooping us. We should just bring him on board.” So I’ve been with the New York Times to be their Johnny-on-the-spot for all things federal court records. It could be the Hunter Biden indictment, it could be tracking every lawsuit against the Trump administration, and then it kind of snowballed from there.
I worked for Rolling Stone when Noah went over there. I’ve been with Bloomberg Law for the last two years on an investigation piece we’re doing on civil rights. And then at some point I found stuff I found interesting that didn’t rise to a national level or was a little too niche. So I kind of built Court Watch as — I don’t say leftovers, but the island of misfit toys of court records I found that I thought should see the light of day. We just hit our three-year anniversary.
A big part of what you do is using PACER. You’ve described PACER as your hobby, what you’d indulge in during boring football games or after putting your kids to bed. When did reading court documents transition from research necessity to something you genuinely enjoy?
It has everything to do with my day job, which is to try to figure out puzzles, right? The puzzle sometimes is going to be a guy who came back from Syria who joined ISIS for a year, and I want to know why a kid from an Ivy League school spent a year in ISIS and what makes him tick. So he’s a puzzle to me — human, but a puzzle too.
Then I’d see court records as a puzzle too, right? A little snippet here, one line in a footnote — what does that actually mean? Let’s pull the thread on that.
In many ways it became mental floss for me. I spend my days looking at neo-Nazis and beheading videos. I don’t have a dog in the fight of a city council member in Sacramento who’s on the take. But it is mental floss to forget about the fact that I just watched an 8-year-old kid learn how to build a bomb in Raqqa.
That was kind of a way to do it. I just kept assuming I would work my way out of a job. I’ve trained hundreds of journalists a year on how to do PACER, but the news deserts keep happening and the teams keep going down and there’s just not anyone out there that has the wherewithal to keep up with it. So I just figured I’d just keep churning along till somebody told me otherwise.
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For people who don’t know, what is PACER?
PACER is a god-awful system. It’s one of the worst things ever created in life. It is the online repository for all things federal court records: 94 different districts all have 94 different websites. They all file things 94 different ways. So if you want to search [for] a warrant in Iowa, it’s different than [searching for a] warrant in Idaho.
It’s a fee-based system. It’s 10 cents a search and then 10 cents a page to download, as if PDFs get more expensive the bigger they are. The U.S. courts rake in like $145 million a year on that racket. There’s a bunch of information that’s there, but it’s behind a paywall or it’s just hidden, right? Who’s going to spend the time to look at exhibit 20 out of 40 on a defense motion? Just me, I think, is what the takeaway is for that.
For some reason my weird, beautiful mind can tell you how they file things in the Northern District of California versus Southern District of Florida. I can find the Epstein grand jury motions before anybody else. I wish I had a better hobby. I wish I could play guitar or do something that benefits mankind, but this is what I got.
The Julian Assange scoop came from you noticing national security prosecutors were listed on a routine indecent exposure case. That’s the kind of anomaly that most people would never catch. Walk me through how you actually search PACER. What are you looking for?
I’m looking for weird quirks, things that seem a little bit off. Julian Assange is a great example. It’s a case in the Eastern District of Virginia. It is a sexual exploitation case that should be a run-of-the-mill, low-level assistant U.S. attorney who’s working that case. But for some reason there were two national security prosecutors on that case.
My immediate thought was, “Okay, this is probably a terrorism case.” Let me just track it, see until I get to a point where they say this is a terrorism case. At some point I clicked on one of the filings and page one was normal and page two was like, “Julian Assange has been indicted and we must keep this sealed” or “keep the seal.”
I’ve got to be honest with you, I forgot about it. A couple days passed and I was like, “Oh, that’s interesting, move on.” Then TheWall Street Journal put out some story that Julian Assange is under indictment and they were using sources. I was like, “Well, there’s not sources. There’s primary source documents you can use to cite that.” So I just tweeted it out after I read Dragons Love Tacos to my kid. It kind of snowballed from there.
Upon reflection, if I had been a classically trained journalist, I probably would have stopped, written a story, asked for comments on both sides, probably been yelled at by a DOJ flack about why I can’t publish it and how it’s going to be a national security problem, and all the things. But I was new to the game, so I didn’t know how to play it. I just thought to myself, “I’m just going to throw it out in the ether and good reporters are going to do good reporting on this.”
The Columbia Journalism Review wrote that your work “has repeatedly broken news that the press would have otherwise missed.” But you’ve also been criticized, including by a New York Times reporter, for tweeting out findings rather than sharing them privately with journalists first. What’s your philosophy on that?
It varies. It’s changed. What’s frustrating to me now is I’ll find something in Texas and I’ll start googling to figure out what the local El Paso Times is, and they’re not around anymore. So I’ve got to send it out. If I think it’s a story that warrants more than just a few retweets, I try to find a reporter to run it down to ground on it.
That reporter was Adam Goldman, and he was giving me shit because TheTimes wanted that story. Fast forward to three months later, they hire me, right? So I get it. But also there’s some level of gatekeeping I don’t think we need to be so worried about on these types of things.
I always get a kick out of — and I do this probably six to 10 times a week — I’ll send a lead to some random KCTV reporter in Minnesota and be like, “Listen, I think this is pretty good. It looks like your mayor is doing something shady.” And they’re like, “Why are you sending — what’s your angle?” I don’t have an angle. I just really like journalism. I think there’s not enough journalists in the world. I think stories are not getting told. If I can kick it to John Smith to go be a reporter, all the better, because I’ve got a thousand other things going on.
You’ve broken hundreds of stories that get picked up by major news outlets, but not always with attribution. What’s it like being in this position where your work has become essential for court reporting, but you’re operating without the institutional backing of a major news organization — on the Court Watch side of things, at least?
It’s terrifying. I was lucky that I got pulled into the beehiiv Media Collective last year, so I have a lawyer that I can ping for things I’m worried about in terms of defamation pieces, and I have a million dollars-worth of insurance for liability, which in this day and age is quite useful.
I do get frustrated when I see the aggressively political hot-take-on-Substack guy announce he’s going to start a Substack and he gets like a million paid followers, and I’m grinding out every day stories that I think are interesting and working them. That’s frustrating as hell to me, but it is what it is. What are you going to do?
“Those little wins do matter. For that one park ranger, the fact that I shot an email did change her life dramatically. That’s cool. That’s what you want to have — journalism that’s impactful in some ways.” — Seamus Hughes
You’ve said Court Watch tries not to put your finger on the scales too hard politically. You just provide direct links to documents.
I don’t fault anyone for being political in nature. I guess what I’m saying is, I’m not good at it. I don’t get fired up internally. I’m not the guy who’s going to be standing on a picket line. It’s just not my vibe. I think there are really good reporters that do that, but I would just be one of thousands that did that. Whereas I don’t think there’s a whole lot of folks left anymore who are just doing the “just the facts, ma’am” approach to these types of things.
I don’t have the intestinal fortitude to deal with all of it. I get enough death threats from neo-Nazis. I don’t need more from angry Republicans or Democrats. So this is kind of my way to do it.
I started my career in the Senate Homeland Security Committee, so I was a Congressional staffer who had no idea what he was doing. My boss was a guy named Jim McGee who was a former investigative reporter at the Miami Herald and TheWashington Post. He actually got a Pulitzer for breaking the Gary Hart story like 30–40 years ago. He taught me how to dig for documents, how to look for the random stuff, and how to just be appreciative that there is a Fourth Estate out there to help get this out there. That kind of stuck with me for 20 years. I think to myself when I do things, “What would Jim do?” You’ve got to have the goods and you can’t just opine to opine for sake.
What story of yours are you most proud of breaking?
It was not a breaking story, but I thought it was good. Early this year, I found a search warrant — I think in Mississippi — of the FBI trying to get tower dumps, which are basically like, “We’re going to pull all the phone records for anyone who’s anywhere near the cell phone tower in order to find like three guys we’re worried about.” I thought, “Okay, we can have a policy debate on whether that is a good thing or a bad thing. Are there civil rights and civil liberties things?” But then they sealed the document, the docket.
That annoyed me to no end because it was unsealed for a long time until someone asked — namely me — and then they sealed it. So we hired a lawyer. I pinged all my subscribers until I found a media lawyer who randomly was a Court Watch subscriber. He wrote a pro bono thing. I ponied up $300 to $500 for a local attorney to file a motion to unseal it, and we got it unsealed the next day. The judge was like, “Oh, it was an oversight.” Sure, whatever. But it’s out there. That’s a cool story for me, just the ability to get information out that wouldn’t normally [get out]. ACLU’s now a party in the lawsuit trying to push it out and things like that. All of that is interesting to me.
I like ones that are small ball to everyone else but interesting to me. There was a National Parks ranger who got charged at the federal level for interfering with a state local police officer on an investigation. That was clearly a turf battle. I thought to myself, “This is silly. Why are you bringing a federal charge against a park ranger for working a case you didn’t want to work?” I asked the DOJ and the next day they dropped the case. Those little wins do matter. For that one park ranger, the fact that I shot an email did change her life dramatically. That’s cool. That’s what you want to have — journalism that’s impactful in some ways.
On the flip side of that, have you ever regretted publishing something?
Yeah, a number of times, particularly in my early career. I don’t know if the word “regret” would work for the Julian Assange thing, but at the end of the day, that prosecutor — or that paralegal — just messed up. Now their name is attached to a huge mistake. Upon reflection, I would have called over probably on those types of things.
I didn’t publish it, but I got close to it. I did a search warrant one time of a gentleman who had allegedly hacked a celebrity’s phone. I was about to hit send on the publication and something fell off in the back of my mind. I called around and it turned out that his neighbor had stolen his Wi-Fi to do it, so it wasn’t the guy I was looking at. I could have ruined some guy’s Google searches for the rest of his life based on that story and opened myself up to a whole lot of lawsuits. But even just in general, I thought it was — so now my standards of when I’m going to write has risen much more than it was five years ago.
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What is the best career advice that you’ve ever received?
I think back to my congressional investigations days, which is: It is a one-day story for you and it’s a lifetime for the subject of your investigation. I’m sure I failed in 20 years. I’m sure there’s moments where I did not remember those lessons on those types of things, but it’s important. I try to remember that as much as possible.
The advice I give other people is: in a dwindling journalism world, you’ve got to be really good at at least one thing so that the guys in the corner office can’t get rid of you. They would be lost if they didn’t have a FOIA person or lost if they didn’t have a court reporter. They have to figure out the money for that.
What makes you hopeful or concerned about the future of court reporting as news deserts expand?
I think the more local you go on your reporting, the more likely you are to be successful. That seems counterintuitive because the pool of subscribers should be smaller, but people do care if there’s going to be a park built in their neighborhood and they’d like to know how the city council voted on that. They probably don’t care as much that park funding has been cut $100 million last year. You’ve got to kind of make it real for them. I think court reporting does allow for that.
I am hopeful. I have this colleague, Peter Beck, who’s a reporting fellow with us. He’s 20-something and he reached out to me a year ago and said, “Listen, I’m a subscriber. I think it’s interesting. Can I intern?” I was like, “Well, I’ve never done that and I don’t like the idea of unpaid stuff, so let’s talk about an honorarium and I’ll just keep losing money.”
He’s a really good reporter — probably the best reporter I’ve worked with, and I’ve worked with a lot of Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters. I’m hopeful that there are diamonds in the rough out there who are able to do that. He needed some guidance in terms of, “Make sure you ask this question,” or “Add ‘according to court records’ as opposed to your own opinion” — those things. But those are all trainable stuff that you don’t actually need to have four years at Columbia with $100,000 in debt to do. You can figure this out. So I’m hopeful of that.
There’s not a lot of court reporters left, but there are a few good ones. There’s a guy at Detroit News named Robert Snell, and I’ve been following Robert for a while. He’s been there forever. He moved his desk — he may deny this, but he did — he moved his desk to a window that overlooks the back of the courthouse because that’s where the grand jury folks would come in, so he would be able to see when people were about to get indicted for things. I desperately want more Robert Snells in the world because they’re good reporters that are doing good work and have been around the block long enough to know to move their desk from the office to the really bad desk in front of the computer.
Terrific interview...I'm so glad Seamus and his protégé are catching the important smaller (ie, less flashy) stories no one else is reporting.