This folder contains data behind the story 'Is The Russia Investigation Really Another Watergate?' https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/russia-investigation/

russia_investigation

Format

A dataset with 194 rows representing every special investigation since the Watergate probe began in 1973 and 13 variables

investigation

Unique id for each investigation

investigation_start

Start date of the investigation

investigation_end

End date of the investigation

investigation_days

Length, in days, of the investigation. Days will be negative if the charge occurred before the investigation began.

name

Name of the person charged (if applicable). Will be blank if there were no charges.

indictment_days

Length, in days, from the start of the investigation to the date the person was charged (if applicable). Days will be negative if the charge occurred before the investigation began.

type

Result of charge (if applicable)

cp_date

Date the person plead guilty or was convicted (if applicable)

cp_days

Length, in days, from the start of the investigation to the date the person plead guilty or was convicted (if applicable)

overturned

Whether or not the relevant person's conviction was overturned

pardoned

Whether or not the relevant person's charge was pardoned

american

Whether or not the relevant person's charge was a U.S. resident

president

President at the center of the investigation

Source

Information for this story is drawn from an original data set of special counsel, independent counsel and special prosecutor investigations from 1973 to 2019. The data set was created by consulting historical sources, including final reports generated by independent counsels, special counsels and special prosecutors; reports in Congressional Quarterly; and contemporaneous news stories. Secondary historical sources were also consulted, including a 2006 Congressional Research Service report about independent counsel investigations and a history of the Watergate investigation by Stanley Kutler. Data about pardons was obtained from the Office of the Pardon Attorney. Indicted organizations were excluded from our analysis. The data set, which is available on Github, includes the names of all people charged as part of these investigations, as well as the outcome of their cases and the dates of major actions in their cases.

2006 Congressional Research Service report: https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc815038/m2/1/high_res_d/98-19_2006Jun08.pdf

dataset in GitHub: https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/data/tree/master/russia-investigation