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UPDATE: Augment with other chapters on CA?
Party of Treason. Not just Trump and his minions but the entire Republican party as a whole may be implicated by the time this is over. Then there’s Cambridge Analytica to complete the Unholy Trinity.
As I argued in Chapter A the entire GOP should be in the electoral penalty box for the next 100 years.
Mueller has increasingly focused on the relationship of the Unholy Trinity:
“Special Counsel Robert Mueller‘s team for the last several weeks has had a growing interest to better understand the relationship between the campaign, the Republican National Committee, and Cambridge Analytica, sources tell ABC News.”
“The company is also under investigation by British officials for its use of Facebook users’ data.”
“Sources tell ABC News several digital experts who worked in support of Trump’s bid in 2016 have met with Mueller’s team for closed-door interviews. The staffers, most of whom were employed by the RNC, served as key members of the 2016 operation working closely with the campaign and the data firm, the sources said. The company worked closely with the Republican candidate’s political team.”
“A spokesperson for the Trump campaign told ABC News in a statement that they “used the RNC for its voter data and not Cambridge Analytica. Using the RNC data was one of the best choices the campaign made. Any claims that voter data were used from another source to support the victory in 2016 are false.”
“A source with direct knowledge who has met with the special counsel’s team tells ABC News investigators have asked former senior level campaign staff about the digital operations, specifically how data was collected and used and how assets were targeted specifically in the battleground states. Mueller’s team has asked witnesses about the process of “micro targeting” which is the process of using data to identify specific groups of individuals and thereby influence their thoughts and potentially their actions.”
Meanwhile-they went to Jared or he went to them anyway:
“Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, and Parscale are among those who credited the use of targeted Facebook advertising – a strategy developed by Cambridge Analytica.”
“We found that Facebook and digital targeting were the most effective ways to reach the audiences. After the primary, we started ramping up because we knew that doing a national campaign is different than doing a primary campaign,” Kushner told Forbes Magazine just after the election. “That was when we formalized the system because we had to ramp up for digital fundraising. We brought in Cambridge Analytica.”
This rare interview Kushner conducted right after the election is very interesting as he clearly thinks Cambridge Analytica was an important part of their strategy. This is very different from what we’ve heard more recently -as CA has become a lightning rod as the investigation and known facts have progressed.
Now Parscale dismisses CA as just not working and the Trump campaign insists they used the RNC data period.
A spokesperson for the Trump campaign told ABC News in a statement that they “used the RNC for its voter data and not Cambridge Analytica. Using the RNC data was one of the best choices the campaign made. Any claims that voter data were used from another source to support the victory in 2016 are false.”
Well one person making that claim is the so-called ‘President’s’ son in law who ran his campaign’s data operation.
At least previously before it became politically toxic.
Speaking of Kushner this comment by Forbes in its interview of him seems more than a little ironic in retrospect:
“It’s unlikely that he can hold a formal position in the Trump White House. Nepotism laws established after President Kennedy made brother Bobby attorney general bar the president from giving government roles to relatives–including in-laws. Reports have stated that the administration is exploring every legal angle to get Kushner into the West Wing–including adding him as an unpaid advisor, though even that may be covered by the law, which was written to ensure fealty to the Constitution rather than the individual.”
UPDATE: Of course what does Trump care about the law? And it remains to be seen if anyone in Congress cares to hold him accountable for breaking it.
But Kushner continues to serve as Trump’s Minister for Everything Important Especially Israel and has faced no reprisals yet-the recent texts between Hannity and Manafort are interesting as they show Manafort expected Kushner to be charged.
With Mueller now set to testify before Congress next month that’s two of about 800 questions the Dems need to ask him:
- Was Manafort’s texts about Kushner being in danger of being charged correct?
- If so for what?
- If so how did Manafort know? Was it related to the fact that both of them were present at the Trump Tower Russia meeting of June, 9, 2016?
- If so why was Kushner ultimately not charged? Is it largely due to Manafort’s own misleading statements? Ie did Manafort’s lies save Kushner?
End of UPDATE
Regarding the work CA did do, it does seem that in a lot of the normal aspects of a campaign’s data operation they were pretty spotty. Their biggest accomplishment seems to have been winning over the Mercers.
However, what is of considerable concern is their ‘psychographics’ operation-they obtained this information from FB users under false pretensions. Beyond this there are concerns that CA used data provide to them by the Russians.
“Scrutiny will likely intensify given revelations that Cambridge’s Russian connections predated the 2016 election. Wylie, the former Cambridge employee, provided documents to the Observer revealing that the firm briefed Lukoil, the Russian oil company, on its behavioral microtargeting strategies. In a recent interview with CNN, Wylie drew a startling connection between the firm’s work and the Russian cyberattacks during the election. “I am concerned that we made Russia aware of the programs that we were working on,” he said, “and that might have sparked an idea that eventually led to some of the disinformation programs that we have seen.”
Indeed, Charles Wylie, the former CA employee turned whistleblower, reveals that despite being warned by Rudy Giuliani’s own legal firm-the firm used foreign nationals on the campaign’s messaging-which is a violation of campaign law.
UPDATE: Important to recall that Bannon was Wylie’s supervisor