Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating the Trump campaign’s data operation in the months leading up to the election, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
Mueller reportedly asked the data firm, Cambridge Analytica, to provide his investigative team with emails of employees who worked with the Trump campaign, according to sources familiar with the matter who spoke with the WSJ.
The House Intelligence Committee, which is also probing Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether the Trump campaign colluded with the foreign power, also requested similar documents from the data firm earlier this year. Cambridge Analytica’s CEO Alexander Nix was interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday, the people familiar with the investigation told WSJ.
Mueller’s request for the emails was earlier this year, before it was widely reported that Nix was in contact with WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange in 2016.
Cambridge Analytica began working for the Trump campaign in mid-May 2016 after former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon introduced Nix to then-candidate Trump. The firm provided the campaign with data, polling and research, WSJ reported.
I do believe Robert Mercer was sly enough to see this coming and try to get out of the way and leave Nix, Kushner, Parscale and even dear daughter Rebekah dangling in the wind. There are digital fingerprints everywhere in this.
Twitter chatter (chitter?) last night was that today’s barrel occupant is Kushner.
All I want for Christmas, Santa Mueller, is…
There are articles (sorry no URLs – can’t remember specifics) about the psychological research that served as the basic science upon which Cambridge Analytica was developed. As a student of human psychology, the article scared the crap out of me, because it rang so true of what I learned about the power of correlation between people’s beliefs and their voting behavior. Cambridge Analytica uses a simple human behavior (likes in Facebook) that correlates with voting preferences as a way of identifying areas of a high results for political advertising. Simple and powerful . . . and scary.
Here is one article: