What counts as a receipt

The principle

A receipt is a public claim paired with a legal record that contradicts it. Not reporting about the claim. Not fact-check consensus. Not consensus at all. A court, a jury, a judge, an arbitrator, or the liar themselves — under oath, in a proceeding with consequences.

Legal records are imperfect instruments. They carry error rates, prosecutorial discretion, and politics. We file them because they are still the most durable public record of a falsehood that exists — and because memory is worse.

The seven standards of proof

Every receipt carries one tier. They are listed here strongest first. The tier is a label for what kind of record caught the claim — not a score of how bad the liar is.

1. TIER 01

   Guilty plea

   The person admitted the facts under oath in open court, before a judge, to end a criminal case. The strongest record possible: self-incrimination.

2. TIER 02

   Criminal conviction

   A jury or judge found fraud or false statements proven beyond a reasonable doubt at trial.

3. TIER 03

   Civil jury verdict

   A civil jury heard evidence and found the person liable — usually for defamation or fraud — by a preponderance of the evidence.

4. TIER 04

   Default judgment

   A court entered a finding of liability against the person because they failed to comply with court orders during the case.

5. TIER 05

   Judicial finding

   A judge ruled the person liable as a matter of law — a bench finding, summary judgment, or trial ruling — after examining the record.

6. TIER 06

   Settlement admission

   The case settled for money, and the settlement text itself acknowledges the underlying claims as false. Stronger than an ordinary settlement; we do not count no-admission payouts alone.

7. TIER 07

   Arbitration award

   A binding arbitrator ruled against the person on the disputed claim, and a court confirmed the award.

What qualifies an entry

• ✠ A specific, attributable claim — something someone actually said, published, or filed, with a date and a venue.
• ✠ A legal record that contradicts it: conviction, plea, verdict, judgment, judicial finding, admission-bearing settlement, or confirmed arbitration award.
• ✠ A citable case name, court, and outcome. The record itself is the primary citation; press coverage is secondary.
• ✠ Public-figure relevance: the person’s lies reached enough people to shape what others believed or did.

What never counts

• ✕ Fact-checks alone. PolitiFire ratings and viral threads are arguments, not records.
• ✕ Dismissed cases, unproven allegations, and ongoing litigation with no finding yet. Pending is not proven.
• ✕ Ordinary settlements with no admission and no judicial finding. Money changes hands for many reasons; a payout alone proves nothing.
• ✕ Claims about a person’s intent, character, or everything-they’ve-ever-said. Receipts are about specific statements and specific records.

When the record moves

Courts change their minds. Convictions get vacated, judgments get reduced, and appeals reshape outcomes. When that happens, the receipt is not deleted — it is annotated. The entry keeps its original finding and states the change, because the sequence itself is the lesson: what was said, what was proven, and what happened next.

If a reversal erases the finding entirely, the entry is reclassified or removed on the next review pass. Vacated-for-procedure (as distinct from acquitted or cleared) is annotated, not erased, with the distinction stated in the entry.

Corrections

Errors in a ledger like this matter more than silence, because the ledger gets quoted. If you find a wrong case name, a dead link, an outdated outcome, or an entry that fails its own tier, use the corrections channel. Verified corrections are applied the same day.

Records are re-reviewed on a rolling basis. The “last reviewed” date on each page reflects the most recent pass over that page’s entries.