FBI and Justice Department Investigating Cambridge Analytica

The New York Times dropped more potentially bad news for Donald Trump: the Justice Department and FBI are investigating right wing financially backed Cambridge Analytica.  In particular, scrutiny is being directed to the company's finances and bank accounts and also how it received the information taken from Facebook.  The obviously question is whether or not Russian Intelligence personnel   stole the data from Facebook and then provided it to Cambridge Analytica and ultimately the Trump campaign.  If the three main players were connected, then the case of collusion increases.  Here are highlights from the Times piece:

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department and the F.B.I. are investigating Cambridge Analytica, the now-defunct political data firm, and have sought to question former employees and banks that handled its business, according to an American official and other people familiar with the inquiry.

Prosecutors have questioned potential witnesses in recent weeks, telling them that there is an open investigation into Cambridge Analytica — which worked on President Trump’s election and other Republican campaigns in 2016 — and “associated U.S. persons.” But the prosecutors provided few other details, and the inquiry appears to be in its early stages, with investigators seeking an overview of the company and its business practices.

The investigation compounds the woes of a firm that has come under intense scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators in the United States and Britain. . . . 

This month, Cambridge Analytica announced that it would shut down and declare bankruptcy, saying that negative press and cascading federal and state investigations had driven away customers and made it impossible for the firm to remain in business.

Cambridge Analytica, the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation declined to comment.

[T]he firm found itself at the center of a trans-Atlantic furor after the Times and Observer articles appeared. It was then dealt another blow when a British news channel broadcast undercover video in which Alexander Nix, the company’s suspended chief executive, suggested that the company had used seduction and bribery to entrap politicians and influence foreign elections.

The federal investigation in the United States appears to focus on the company’s financial dealings — investigators have reached out to the company’s banks, for instance — and how it acquired and used personal data pulled from Facebook and other sources, according to the American official, who was briefed on the inquiry, and other people familiar with it.

In addition, the investigators have contacted Facebook, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the investigation. The official would not provide any other details, and Facebook declined to comment.

[T]he prosecutors involved is the assistant chief of the Justice Department’s securities and financial fraud division, Brian Kidd. The effort is being assisted by at least one agent who investigates cybercrime for the F.B.I., those people said.

The new company was overseen by Mr. Mercer’s daughter, Rebekah, and then adviser, Stephen K. Bannon, both of whom went on to enjoy influential positions in Mr. Trump’s circle before the president’s break with Mr. Bannon this year.

Also in 2014, a contractor for the new firm used quiz apps and other programs to gather private profile information from as many as 87 million Facebook users, data former Cambridge employees said provided the critical basis for the new company’s voter profiles. The Times also reported in March that the company had sent personnel from Canada and Europe to work on various campaigns in the 2014 midterm elections and in 2016 campaigns, raising questions about Cambridge’s compliance with federal election law, which limits the involvement of non-citizens in election campaigns.

White Supremacy Is America's Achilles Heel

Many of those who have remained in the Republican party in the past have used their supposed support for "fiscal conservatism" as the fig leaf for explaining their continued ties to a political party that now is defined by right wing Christian extremists and white supremacists.  With the passage of the federal budget busting GOP/Trump tax bill last December, the fig leaf of alleged GOP fiscal conservatism has been utterly disintegrate as if it had been tossed into a raging fire or crematorium. Thus, the question that needs to be asked of these Republicans of what their real motivations are going forward for remaining in a party that has exhibited budgetary recklessness and total disregard for fiscal responsibility.  As I have noted in previous posts, in my view, many are motivated by racism even thought they would vehemently deny it if directly asked whether or not they are racists.  As a fairly lengthy piece in the Atlantic  points out, racism has a long history in American politics and Trump and today's GOP - with the help of Russian efforts - are 100% on board for using race to stir hatred and appeal to white voters.  Here are article highlights:

There are a million and one threads to the chaos currently unspooling about the Trump administration and the 2016 election. One might be forgiven for giving up on trying to navigate the intricacies of congressional Russia inquiries, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s ever-widening probe, news about foreign intrusions into voting systems, investigations about Twitter bots, and the developing story about the manipulation of Facebook data.

But there’s one main thread running through all of these stories, one that should orient readers to the things that truly matter, whether the news is about Cambridge Analytica or the Russian “troll farm” known as the Internet Research Agency. It’s the fact that the human brain is eminently exploitable—as are, by extension, the civic and democratic institutions the human brain has built.  And in America, a country built from its foundations on white supremacy, where identity is forged in the crucible of a centuries-old “race question,” one of the easiest and most effective ways to “hack” those institutions is the use of racism in disinformation and propaganda campaigns. Almost every single American era of widespread racial friction was buttressed by sophisticated psychological manipulation, data gathering, and propaganda, a concoction that when taken together, often helped push whites to the extremes of anti-democratic oppression and violence. It’s the oldest American trick in the book.

[O]ne vital detail is the seemingly critical role of racial foment in Cambridge Analytica’s electoral work. . . . Cambridge Analytica, owned by conservative mega-donor Robert Mercer and linked heavily to former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon, began embarking on research to figure out how to mobilize white conservatives:

In focus groups arranged to test messages for the 2014 midterms, these voters responded to calls for building a new wall to block the entry of illegal immigrants, to reforms intended to ‘drain the swamp’ of Washington’s entrenched political community and to thinly veiled forms of racism toward African Americans called ‘race realism,’ [Wylie] recounted.

“Race realism” is a new-ish term describing an old intellectual—or anti-intellectual—tradition using pseudoscience in the pursuit of racial dominance. It’s a new label for what’s now referred to as “scientific racism,” or research in social science, biology, and philosophy dedicated to proving the scientific inferiority of black people and other minorities, and thus validating white racial hegemony.

Scientific racism—from the earliest anthropology to the quackery of phrenology to the ongoing appeal of eugenics—became the justification for white-supremacist and herrenvolk governments the world over, including Jim Crow America, the Third Reich, and South African apartheid.

[T]he Internet Research Agency’s alleged actions were part of a set of schemes designed to leverage both the wealth of data in social media, and to use that data to exploit and manipulate people via the lever of racism.

The extent of the usefulness to the Trump campaign of these specific initiatives is still in question, but the strength of racist appeals should not be discounted out of hand. Propaganda and fear-mongering can be catalysts for underlying racist sentiment, either by confirming deeply held suspicions or encouraging others to edge past rhetorical boundaries—such as, say, prohibitions against violence, or the defense of American democracy. Such catalysts lower the activation energy for extremism.

. . . . “race realism” is a clever term designed to provide an intellectual sheen to the most base racist instincts. As such, it has a critical importance in the alt-right movement’s search for mainstream validation.

The very fact that Cambridge Analytica’s researchers stumbled upon and tested the effectiveness of “race realism” in Facebook campaigns is alarming, but it doesn’t stand alone. The president’s campaign also employed race-baiting rhetoric. Until recently, Breitbart—a site formerly run by Trump’s one-time campaign CEO and chief strategist—maintained a “Black Crime” story category. The use of racist propaganda is a startling echo of the past and could be a blueprint for the future. Such propaganda has been used before to radicalize and mobilize Americans, in opposition to the rule of law, and even in opposition to democracy.

[A]s Terry Ann Knopf argues in Rumors, Race, and Riots, fake stories about slave rebellions inflamed pro-secessionist thought in the South. The common theme is one that newspaper editors and demagogues alike used repeatedly to their advantage: White citizens were uniquely susceptible to perceived threats to their power, both nonviolent and violent, and often responded by further suspending democracy.

[B]ut it’s the specific ways in which white supremacists engaged in widespread radicalization of poor whites that seems particularly relevant today. . . . Scientific racism was critical in establishing the pretext for barring black people from democratic participation, and for inspiring them to ever more violent methods.

The indictment filed in February by special counsel Robert Mueller against 13 Russian nationals working for the Internet Research Agency illustrates how the Kremlin was interested in exploiting racial tensions on Trump’s behalf. . . . One central tactic appeared to be cribbed directly from the Jim Crow playbook: using both racist messaging against black people and fake black activism to amplify polarization and the likelihood of political violence. . . . The second prong in the racial strategy was disseminating false information about voter fraud or the potential of voter fraud, delivered by fake conservative accounts to conservative users. The third was racist fear-mongering, sometimes using the fake tweets from the first prong and reaction to them as fodder.

[I]f there’s anything to be learned from the politics of the past few decades, it’s that the margins of American democracy are often razor thin. And racism is a tried and true way to work those margins to political advantage.

Take, for example, the Internet Research Agency’s strategy involving using imposter accounts designed to look like real black, Latino, and Muslim activists.

There's much more in the article, including a review of how appeals to racism have been utilized in the past and the eagerness some white Americans have exhibited in jumping on the racist bandwagon.  Personally, I continue to believe that appeals to racism - with a dash of religious extremism - is what garnered Trump the roughly 70,000 votes need to flip three states to Trump's electoral column. Do I feel any need to be polite or sensitive to those who bought into this poison?  Definitely not. 

A Republican Operative and a Suspected Russian Spy

A piece in The Atlantic looks at yet another perplexing tie between a long time Republican operative and a suspected member of Russian Intelligence which again makes one wonder why Republicans - self-proclaimed champions of America and patriotism - have such an affinity for Russians and working for puppets of Vladimir Putin.  Is it all just about making money at whatever cost?  It is also noteworthy that Sam Patten has ties to Paul Manafort and Cambridge Analytica, both targets of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russiagate probe.   I will let readers draw their own inferences.  I just find the whole situation bizarre. Here are article highlights. 

A longtime Republican operative with ties to the controversial data firm hired by President Donald Trump’s campaign team also has a nearly two-decade-long friendship and business relationship with a suspected Russian intelligence agent, Konstantin Kilimnik, who has landed in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s crosshairs.

The Washington-based operative, Sam Patten, would not tell me whether he has been interviewed by Mueller’s team as part of their investigation into Russia’s election interference and potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow.

Patten’s long friendship with Kilimnik—which stems from their time working together at the International Republican Institute in Moscow between 2001 and 2003—would likely be enough to draw scrutiny from Mueller, who appears to have homed in on Kilimnik as a potentially significant link between the Trump campaign and Russia. The special counsel’s office alleged in a court filing late last month that Kilimnik still had ties to Russian intelligence services in 2016, and that his conversations with Gates in September of that year are relevant to the investigation. Manafort and Gates’s arrival to the campaign team coincided with the most pivotal Russia-related episode of the election: the release of emails that had been stolen from the Democratic National Committee by hackers working for the GRU, Russia’s premier military-intelligence unit. [Patten and Kilimnik's] relationship is also proof that Kilimnik’s ability to ingratiate himself with American political consultants went beyond Manafort and Gates—a fact that could serve as a new data point in examining Russia’s ties to Republican operatives in the U.S. By the spring of 2015 . . . . Kilimnik was already working on a new venture with Patten that appeared to be focused on targeted messaging in foreign elections.

That venture, first reported by The Daily Beast this week, was a private LLC incorporated in February 2015 called Begemot Ventures International (BVI) with a mission to “build the right arguments before domestic and international audiences.” Kilimnik is listed as the firm’s principal and Patten is listed as an executive, according to company records, and the company is registered to Patten’s office address in Washington.

It is not clear why Patten, who already had a consulting firm registered in D.C., decided to open a brand-new company with Kilimnik. . . . . About eight months after BVI was incorporated, in October 2015, Patten was in Ukraine advising Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko on his reelection campaign. On his website, Patten writes that he “helped steer Mayor Klitschko to reelection in Ukraine’s capital and largest city in one of the toughest anti-government atmospheres in that country’s history.”

Serhiy Lyovochkin—the former chief of staff to ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who hired Manafort to rebrand the pro-Russia Party of Regions in 2014—brought Patten onto Klitschko’s team, Ukrainian media reported at the time. Dmitry Firtash, a pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarch with ties to Manafort who is known for bankrolling pro-Russia candidates in Ukraine, also boasted in 2015 that he was involved in Klitschko’s campaign. Asked whether Manafort coordinated with Patten and/or Kilimnik on Klitschko’s reelection campaign, a spokesman for Manafort said he had “nothing to add.”  

Patten describes himself as an “international political consultant” on his website, but he worked at the Oregon office of Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, SCL Group, helping to fine-tune the firm’s voter targeting operations in the runup to the 2014 midterm elections . . . Both Republican candidates Ted Cruz and Donald Trump employed Cambridge Analytica during the 2016 election. Mueller is now scrutinizing the Trump campaign’s ties to Cambridge Analytica, whose board included Trump’s campaign CEO and former chief strategist, Steve Bannon. . . . . There is no evidence that Patten did any work with Cambridge Analytica or the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. But his relationship with the data firm did not end with the 2014 midterm elections. Gates and Manafort—who were indicted by Mueller in late October on charges including money laundering and tax evasion—remained in touch with Kilimnik during the campaign, according to court documents and emails, even though both knew about Kilimnik’s background in Russian intelligence. Kilimnik later acknowledged in an interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that he and Manafort emailed each other “about Trump and everything” during the campaign. “There were millions of emails,” Kilimnik told RFERL in a text message. “We worked for 11 years. And we discussed a lot of issues, from Putin to women.”

Cambridge Analytica Sent Foreigners to Advise GOP Campaigns

Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix.

Things would seem to be getting worse and worse for the Republican Party as more and more information comes to light about the role that Cambridge Analytic played in Republican campaigns even before the 2016 presidential election.  Specifically, foreigners were involved in advising Republican campaigns in a number of congressional campaigns  across the country even though such activity was illegal.  It's all part of the GOP agenda to win no matter what be it through disenfranchising those perceived to be pro-Democrat to outright flouting the law. The obvious take away is that if this happened in 2014, it is pretty safe to assume that it happened in spades in 2016.  Just as tellingly, Steve Bannon and his ultra-right wing financiers were involved in the 2014 effort.  Note that John Bolton's name also comes up.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at this new development.  Here are highlights:

Cambridge Analytica assigned dozens of non-U.S. citizens to provide campaign strategy and messaging advice to Republican candidates in 2014, according to three former workers for the data firm, even as an attorney warned executives to abide by U.S. laws limiting foreign involvement in elections. Wylie, who emerged this month as a whistleblower, provided The Washington Post with documents that describe a program across several U.S. states to win campaigns for Republicans using psychological profiling to reach voters with individually tailored messages. The documents include previously unreported details about the program, which was called “Project Ripon” for the Wisconsin town where the Republican Party was born in 1854. Those [election law] restrictions were explained in a 10-page memo prepared in July 2014 by a New York attorney, Laurence Levy, for Cambridge Analytica’s leadership at the time, including President Rebekah Mercer, Vice President Stephen K. Bannon and chief executive Alexander Nix. The memo said that foreign nationals could serve in minor roles — for example as “functionaries” handling data — but could not involve themselves in significant campaign decisions or provide high-level analysis or strategy. Many of those employees and contractors were involved in helping to decide what voters to target with political messages and what messages to deliver to them, the former workers said. Their tasks ran the gamut of campaign work, including “managing media relations” as well as fundraising, planning events, and providing “communications strategy” and “talking points, speeches [and] debate prep,” according to a document touting the firm’s 2014 work. “Its dirty little secret was that there was no one American involved in it, that it was a de facto foreign agent, working on an American election,” Wylie said.

Two other former Cambridge Analytica workers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fear that they may have violated U.S. law in their campaign work, said concerns about the legality of Cambridge Analytica’s work in the United States were a regular subject of employee conversations at the company, especially after the 2014 vote.

[E]mployees worried the company was giving its foreign employees potentially inaccurate immigration documents to provide upon entering the United States, showing that they were not there to work when they had arrived for the purpose of advising campaigns. “We knew that everything was not above board, but we weren’t too concerned about it,” said one of the former Cambridge Analytica workers, who spent several months in the United States working on Republican campaigns. “It was the Wild West. That’s certainly how they carried on in 2014.” Cambridge Analytica, whose offices were raided over the weekend by British authorities, has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing but did not reply to requests for comment from The Washington Post for this story. Project Ripon was described by Wylie and other workers as an ambitious effort in which Cambridge Analytica would advise American campaigns on how to use data to find “hidden Republicans.” Ripon also was the name of an online campaign management tool designed for the effort and described in a company brochure produced in London that was subtitled, “WINNING BACK AMERICA.” Company documents obtained by The Post show the U.S. program involved a staff of 41 employees and contractors, and spent $7.5 million between April and July 2014. Cambridge Analytica documents show it advised a congressional candidate in Oregon, state legislative candidates in Colorado and, on behalf of the North Carolina Republican Party, the winning campaign for Sen. Thom Tillis. The company, which asserted that Republican candidates won most of the races it worked on in 2014, also provided independent support for candidates in Arkansas, New Hampshire and North Carolina through a super PAC controlled by former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, who was named last week by Trump to be national security adviser. Brett Kappel, a campaign finance lawyer at Akerman LLP, said the accounts of Wylie and the other former Cambridge Analytica workers raises legal concerns. “If Mr. Wylie's allegations are true, the Justice Department could prosecute Cambridge Analytica and its managers for knowing and willful violations of the prohibition on foreign national contributions.” “It would be a problem for a U.S. super PAC — or any other domestic political actor — to have foreign nationals involved in running a political operation, including making decisions on strategy, targeting and expenditures for that political entity,” he said. “If foreigners were involved in the senior levels of decision-making for a political organization, that would be a violation of federal law.” The former Cambridge Analytica workers did not provide information about what transpired in 2016, when the company did work for Cruz and Trump.

The plot just keeps on continuing to thicken.   A piece in The Guardian has details on what may have transpired in 2016 here. 

Trump Campaign To Papadopoulos:Contact Russians; Brits Raid Cambridge Analytica Offices

While Der Trumpenführer, and House Republicans continue to claim the Russiagate investigation  is a "witch hunt," two new developments could well show that claim to be a lie.   First, it now seems that George Papadopoulos - who has copped a guilty plea and is working with Robert Mueller - was told by Trump campaign officials to make contact with the Russians and secured campaign approval before he sought to explore what Russia could do for the campaign.  So much for Trump's claim that Papadopoulos was a glorified coffee boy.  Potentially even more devastating is word the British officials have raided the London offices of Cambridge Analytica and are seizing the company's data base and servers - items that might provide a clear and indisputable link between Russian intelligence officials and the Trump campaign.  Trump in typical form has tried to distract the media - or at least the GOP's Christofascist base - by announcing a new ban on transgender members of the U.S. military.   First this from the Washington Post on Papadopoulos' direction from the Trump campaign:

When a Russian news agency reached out to George Papadopoulos to request an interview shortly before the 2016 election, the young adviser to then-candidate Donald Trump made sure to seek approval from campaign headquarters.

“You should do it,” deputy communications director Bryan Lanza urged Papadopoulos in a September 2016 email,  . . .

The exchange was a sign that Papadopoulos — who pushed the Trump operation to meet with Russian officials — had the campaign’s blessing for some of his foreign outreach.

Since Papadopoulos pleaded guilty last year to lying to the FBI about his Russia contacts during the campaign and agreed to cooperate with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, Trump officials have sought to paint the 30-year-old energy consultant as a low-level volunteer whose outreach to Russia was not authorized by the campaign — and in some cases was actively discouraged.

Emails described to The Washington Post, which are among thousands of documents turned over to investigators examining Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, show Papadopoulos had more extensive contact with key Trump campaign and presidential transition officials than has been publicly acknowledged.

Among those who communicated with Papadopoulos were senior campaign figures such as strategist Stephen K. Bannon and adviser Michael Flynn, who corresponded with him about his efforts to broker ties between Trump and top foreign officials, the emails show.

Thomas Breen, an attorney for Papadopoulos, declined to comment. A White House spokesman also declined to comment.

In a tweet after Papadopoulos pleaded guilty, Trump wrote that “few people knew the young, low level volunteer named George, who has already proven to be a liar.” Another Trump campaign staffer dismissed Papadopoulos as a mere “coffee boy” during the campaign.
 At the end of March, Papadopoulos attended a meeting of Trump’s newly named national security advisory group at the candidate’s not-yet-opened hotel in Washington. After introducing himself, the young adviser announced he could organize a meeting between Russian President Vladi­mir Putin and Trump, according to court documents.

That Trump and his circle of sycophants have lied about Papadopoulos'  roll should surprise no one not living under a rock or only watching Fox News.

Adding to the fun is the fact that British authorities, as noted above, raided the London offices of Cambridge Analytica which may have been the go between for Russian intelligence and the Trump campaign.  One can only imagine what goodies that company's data base and computer servers may yield.   Here are highlights from Politico:

U.K. authorities raided Cambridge Analytica’s offices overnight amid an investigation into whether the political consulting firm illegally acquired Facebook data to target voters.

Around 18 investigators were seen entering the company’s London headquarters after obtaining a warrant to search its database and servers Friday night, the Guardian reported. The search lasted seven hours, according to the BBC.

“This is just one part of a larger investigation into the use of personal data and analytics for political purposes,” the Information Commissioner’s Office said late Friday after receiving the warrant. “As you will expect, we will now need to collect, assess and consider the evidence before coming to any conclusions.”

The search is the latest development in a ballooning scandal enveloping both the firm and Facebook. Officials on both sides of the Atlantic are scrutinizing the companies amid accusations that Cambridge Analytica may have used 50 million Facebook users’ data without proper consent to help U.S. President Donald Trump’s election.

Perhaps the Brits will expose what the Congressional Republicans have been working so hard to keep hidden.  

Bannon Oversaw Cambridge Analytica’s Collection of Facebook Data

With a seemingly growing drumbeat of stories that about the Trump/Pence campaign and efforts by Trump to kill the Russiagate investigation, new information has broken about Steve Bannon's and later Jared Kushner's involvement with collection data on American citizens which would aid in targeting false and anti-Hillary Clinton propaganda information.  This data would also have been most helpful to Russian bots in their efforts to damage Hillary Clinton.  With questions growing, Cambridge Analytica has announced that it has suspended it's chief executive officer who has bragged about aiding the Trump campaign.  Obviously, if the information that Steve Bannon helped collect made it into Russian hands, the link between the Trump campaign and Vladimir Putin's intelligence agencies may be finally confirmed.  Here are excerpts from the Washington Post:

Conservative strategist Stephen K. Bannon oversaw Cambridge Analytica’s early efforts to collect troves of Facebook data as part of an ambitious program to build detailed profiles of millions of American voters, a former employee of the data-science firm said Tuesday.

The 2014 effort was part of a high-tech form of voter persuasion touted by the company, which under Bannon identified and tested the power of anti-establishment messages that later would emerge as central themes in President Trump’s campaign speeches, according to Chris Wylie, who left the company at the end of that year.

Among the messages tested were “drain the swamp” and “deep state,” he said.

Cambridge Analytica, which worked for Trump’s 2016 campaign, is now facing questions about alleged unethical practices, including charges that the firm improperly handled the data of tens of millions of Facebook users. On Tuesday, the company’s board announced that it was suspending its chief executive, Alexander Nix, after British television released secret recordings that appeared to show him talking about entrapping political opponents.

Bannon helped launch Cambridge Analytica with the financial backing of the wealthy Mercer family as part of a broader effort to create a populist power base. Earlier this year, the Mercers cut ties with Bannon after he was quoted making incendiary comments about Trump and his family.

In an interview Tuesday with The Washington Post at his lawyer’s London office, Wylie said that Bannon — while he was a top executive at Cambridge Analytica and head of Breitbart News — was deeply involved in the company’s strategy and approved spending nearly $1 million to acquire data, including Facebook profiles, in 2014.

Bannon, who served on the company’s board, did not respond to a request for comment. He served as vice president and secretary of Cambridge Analytica from June 2014 to August 2016, when he became chief executive of Trump’s campaign, according to his publicly filed financial disclosure. In 2017, he joined Trump in the White House as his chief strategist.

Bannon received more than $125,000 in consulting fees from Cambridge Analytica in 2016 and owned “membership units” in the company worth between $1 million and $5 million, according to his financial disclosure.

 

Facebook has said that information was improperly shared and that it requested the deletion of the data in 2015. Cambridge Analytica officials said that they had done so, but Facebook said it received reports several days ago that the data was not deleted.

Bannon “approved the data-collection scheme we were proposing,” Wylie said. The Mercers did not respond to a request for comment.

The data and analyses that Cambridge Analytica generated in this time provided discoveries that would later form the emotionally charged core of Trump’s presidential platform, said Wylie, whose disclosures in news reports over the past several days have rocked both his onetime employer and Facebook.

The year before Trump announced his presidential bid, the data firm already had found a high level of alienation among young, white Americans with a conservative bent.

 

The controversy over Cambridge Analytica’s data collection erupted in recent days amid news reports that an app created by a Cambridge University psychologist, Aleksandr Kogan, accessed extensive personal data of 50 million Facebook users. 

 

Facebook’s policy, which has since changed, allowed Kogan to also collect data —including names, home towns, religious affiliations and likes — on all of the Facebook “friends” of those users. Kogan shared that data with Cambridge Analytica for its growing database on American voters.

Facebook on Friday banned the parent company of Cambridge Analytica, Kogan and Wylie for improperly sharing that data.

The Federal Trade Commission has opened an investigation into Facebook to determine whether the social media platform violated a 2011 consent decree governing its privacy policies when it allowed the data collection. And Wylie plans to testify to Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee as part of their investigation of Russian interference in the election, including possible ties to the Trump campaign.

 

Meanwhile, Britain’s Channel 4 News aired a video Tuesday in which Nix was shown boasting about his work for Trump. He seemed to highlight his firm’s secrecy, at one point stressing the need to set up a special email account that self-destructs all messages so that “there’s no evidence, there’s no paper trail, there’s nothing.” 

 

After Cruz faded, the Mercers switched their allegiance to Trump and pitched their services to Trump’s digital director, Brad Parscale. The company’s hiring was approved by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who was informally helping to manage the campaign with a focus on digital strategy. 

Kushner said in an interview with Forbes magazine that the campaign “found that Facebook and digital targeting were the most effective ways to reach the audiences. . . .We brought in Cambridge Analytica.” Kushner said he “built” a data hub for the campaign “which nobody knew about, until towards the end.” 

Kushner’s spokesman and lawyer both declined to comment Tuesday.