2020 seems to be the year of blowing things wide open

Or maybe more appropriately, the year of seeing clearly.

An explosive leak of tens of thousands of documents from the defunct data firm Cambridge Analytica is set to expose the inner workings of the company that collapsed after the Observer revealed it had misappropriated 87 million Facebook profiles.

More than 100,000 documents relating to work in 68 countries that will lay bare the global infrastructure of an operation used to manipulate voters on “an industrial scale” is set to be released over the next months.

[...]

The release of documents began on New Year’s Day on an anonymous Twitter account, @HindsightFiles. [...] The documents were revealed to have come from Brittany Kaiser, an ex-Cambridge Analytica employee turned whistleblower, and to be the same ones subpoeaned by Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Kaiser, who starred in the Oscar-shortlisted Netflix documentary The Great Hack, decided to go public after last month’s election in Britain.

[...]

The documents were retrieved from her email accounts and hard drives, and though she handed over some material to parliament in April 2018, she said there were thousands and thousands more pages which showed a “breadth and depth of the work” that went “way beyond what people think they know about ‘the Cambridge Analytica scandal’”.

[...]

Kaiser said the Facebook data scandal was part of a much bigger global operation that worked with governments, intelligence agencies, commercial companies and political campaigns to manipulate and influence people, and that raised huge national security implications.

[...]

“There are emails between these major Trump donors discussing ways of obscuring the source of their donations through a series of different financial vehicles. These documents expose the entire dark money machinery behind US politics.” The same machinery, she says, was deployed in other countries that Cambridge Analytica worked in, including, she claims, Britain.

Emma Briant, an academic at Bard College, New York, who specialises in investigating propaganda and has had access to some of the documents for research, said that what had been revealed was “the tip of the iceberg”.

“The documents reveal a much clearer idea of what actually happened in the 2016 US presidential election, which has a huge bearing on what will happen in 2020. It’s the same people involved who we know are building on these same techniques,” she said.

  Guardian

Cambridge Analytica re-exposed

Terry Gross talks to Christopher Wylie about his work at and why he quit Cambridge Analytica.  Bottom line:  The same people are still at it, working for the Trump 2020 campaign.

h/t Glenna

Is there such a thing as a free and fair election in our future?

If you're still feeling fuzzy (as I was) about Cambridge Analytica and its interference/impact on our 2016 election and the Brexit campaign, I recommend "The Great Hack" now streaming on Netflix.



...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  Flashback to February:

It ain't over till the fat lady sings

Clarification 8/6: That title is not any comment on Brittany Kaiser. It's a quote attributed to Casey Stengel about calling a game before it'a actually ended.

A director of the controversial data company Cambridge Analytica, who appeared with Arron Banks at the launch of the Leave.EU campaign, has been subpoenaed by the US investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

A spokesman for Brittany Kaiser, former business development director for Cambridge Analytica – which collapsed after the Observer revealed details of its misuse of Facebook data – confirmed that she had been subpoenaed by special counsel Robert Mueller, and was cooperating fully with his investigation.

He added that she was assisting other US congressional and legal investigations into the company’s activities and had voluntarily turned over documents and data.

[...]

Damian Collins, chairman of parliament’s inquiry into fake news, said it was “no surprise” that Kaiser was under scrutiny by Mueller because “her work connected her to WikiLeaks, Cambridge Analytica and [its parent company] SCL, the Trump campaign, Leave.EU and Arron Banks”.

He said it was now vital Britain had its own inquiry into foreign interference: “We should not be leaving this to the Americans.”

  Guardian

Not if you want to get to the truth of the matter.

In August, Sam Patten, a US political consultant who had worked for Cambridge Analytica on campaigns in the US and abroad, struck a plea deal with Mueller after admitting he had failed to register as a foreign agent for a Ukrainian oligarch.

He became a subject of the special counsel’s inquiry because of work done with Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager, in Ukraine. He had also set up a business with Konstantin Kilimnik, a key figure who Mueller has alleged has ties to Russian intelligence and who is facing charges of obstruction of justice. [Kaiser, however, is the first person connected directly to both the Brexit and Trump campaigns known to have been questioned by Mueller.

The news came to light in a new Netflix documentary, The Great Hack, which premiered at the Sundance film festival last month and is expected to be released later this spring. Film-makers followed Kaiser for months after she approached the Guardian, including moments after she received the subpoena. She claims the summons came after the Guardian revealed she had visited WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange while still a Cambridge Analytica employee in February 2017, three months after the US election.

[...]

In the film, Kaiser says that she has gone from being a cooperating witness to a subject of investigation because of her contact with Assange.

In October 2017, it was revealed that Alexander Nix, the chief executive of Cambridge Analytica, had contacted Assange in August 2016 to try to obtain emails from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign – which indictments from Mueller’s team say were obtained by Russian military intelligence – to use in Donald Trump’s campaign.

[...]

Patten and Kaiser were involved in a controversial election campaign in Nigeria in January 2015, which former Cambridge Analytica employees say had “unsettling” parallels to the US presidential election.

The Guardian revealed that the data firm had worked alongside a team of unidentified Israeli intelligence operatives on the campaign.

Ah yes, the Israeli connection. I imagine there will be several countries interested in the information in Mueller's eventual report - assuming there is one.



UPDATE 8/6:

Linking Trump and Farage through Bannon, Russia, and money laundering

Stories are coming out now that the Brexit people were also in collusion with the Russians. And it gets just as dark and tainted as the Trump story. Here's the Guardian on the latest:

[I]t’s a fascinating, revealing, and disturbing insight into the nature of the relationship between officials representing the Russian government and the main funder of the Leave campaign. A relationship that was, until now, partly covert and hidden. And which Banks conceded in parliament on Tuesday that he’d lied about for two years.

This was the campaign headed by Nigel Farage, whose close friend and ally, Steve Bannon, had been Trump’s campaign manager and who said, on Wednesday: “I have never received any Russian financial or political support...”

And it plunges Britain directly into the same nexus of relationships that is the focus of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Two years on, we are in the dark about so much. What was the exact nature of Farage’s Leave.EU campaign’s relationship to the Russian government?

[...]

Farage had been on the campaign trail for Trump when his aide and fundraiser, George Cottrell, was arrested by the FBI on money-laundering charges. Material seen by the Observer suggests [political campaigner Andy] Wigmore sent confidential legal documents, including the FBI indictment, to the Russian embassy.

[...]

I’ve been investigating this story, and this web of relationships between Trump, Russia, Cambridge Analytica and the Leave campaign for 18 months. And [...] Leave.EU has crafted social media messages targeted at me, aimed at discrediting me and my work.

[...]

A few months earlier, [Leave.EU Brexit campaign co-founder Arron] Banks tweeted: “@carolecadwalla wouldn’t be so lippy in Russia!” A tweet he has now deleted.

[...]

Two weeks later, the Observer received the first of a series of extraordinary letters from the Russian embassy – one of which came personally to me from [Russian ambassador to the UK, ] Alexander Yakovenko – about my reporting. “We think it’s a textbook example of bad journalism which raises quite a few questions regarding the true colours of the reporter.” Then, on 13 November, a watershed moment, when Theresa May finally stood up and accused Russia of “weaponising information” and meddling in our democracy.

[...]

The next day, Leave.EU’s official account tweeted a video, headlined: “@carolecadwalla takes a hit as the Russian conspiracy deepens.” It described me as “hysterical Guardian investigator Carole Codswallop”. The video was a clip of the film Airplane! and they had photoshopped my face into that of a “hysterical” woman being hit repeatedly around the head. The last frame showed a woman with a gun. In the background, the Russian anthem played.

[...]

Hundreds of people reported it to Twitter and the police, but still it stayed up. On the evening of the second day, I asked my editor to intervene. That night, he wrote to Wigmore. The next morning, it finally came down.

[...]

There was nothing hidden or covert about the hundreds of social media postings and tweets that showed Leave.EU’s and Farage’s support of Russian policies and the Russian political agenda. What I hadn’t contemplated, until now, was that this may have been co-ordinated with the Russian government.

[...]

[W]hat we appear to see through Banks and Wigmore is a linked series of relationships between the Trump campaign – via Steve Bannon – to the public face of Leave.EU’s campaign, Nigel Farage. Through Farage to Banks and Wigmore. And through Banks and Wigmore to the Russian government.

[...]

[I]s this a relationship between the Russians and the Leave campaign that is hiding in plain sight?

What we know now is that this relationship is deeper and more complex than we could have imagined. And that Banks and Wigmore lied about it: to the public, to parliament. And we don’t know why.

  Guardian

Friends of Russia money laundering club?

UPDATE:

In related news:

Posh George gets busted.

Is Mark Zuckerberg an alien?

   

Does he ever go outside in the sun?

The hearings on Tuesday in the Senate at which Mark Zuckerberg [...] apologized for Facebook’s role in the Russian ratfcking of the 2016 presidential election was one of the more surreal spectacles in the history of the world’s greatest deliberative body.

The ostensible subject was how Facebook handled a firm called Cambridge Analytica, a company with ties to the Mercers, a prime conservative sugar-family, which, in turn, had ties to the Trump campaign. The actual testimony, however, was a glimpse into how an 18th century institution, run primarily by 20th century white men, tries to cope with 21st century technology and its application to electoral chicanery. Most of them would have been better off letting their grandchildren question Zuckerberg.

[...]

Internet messianism always has made my skin itch just a little, and I think it pretty much died on Tuesday before the Senate. The members of the committee may have been several parsecs behind the times, but Zuckerberg came off not like a social and cultural visionary, but like just another reckless billionaire capitalist, clinging to his profits at all costs. He was the coal executive whose mine blew up. He was the oil baron whose tanker ran aground.

[...]

God love him, though, Tailgunner Ted Cruz [...] was most concerned about establishing social media as another context in which weepy conservatives could drive the nails through the palms of their own hands.

In case you haven’t been keeping up, the conservative self-martyrdom industry is in full cry these days over how their speech is being oppressed by Facebook and Twitter.

[...]

But, as many people have noted, Cruz somehow forgot to mention the fact that, during the 2016 election, it was his presidential campaign that was Cambridge Analytica’s first choice, which The Guardian hipped us to back in 2015.

[...]

I mention all this because I guarantee that this is going to be the main diversion over the next few months while the investigations into the Russian ratfcking heat up.

  Charles P Pierce

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 5/2/18:

Early morning presidential pugilism

Joe didn't threaten him.  He made a stupid remark about how he would have cleaned Trump's clock - in high school.  I can't stand physical fighting, but I'd actually pay to see that one.  Two crazy old tough-talking, mouthy geezers trying to land a punch.

Make Trump wear a large, loose-fitting jumpsuit, though.  I don't need another picture in my mind like this one:

That top tweet is evidence that Old Lard Ass has had his noggin knocked a few times already.  Because, what they're saying now is that Cambridge Analytica used information in violation of Facebook regulations to covertly and underhandedly help Trump win.  You'd think that wouldn't be something a person would want to admit, much less brag about.  There's nothing flattering in what they're saying now.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:






UPDATE 5/2 18:

Tell us what you really think, Charlie

This is the concluding paragraph in a Charlie Pierce article about Cambridge Analytica:

There simply was nothing about the Trump campaign that wasn’t rotten at its core. The candidate himself and most of his advisers had a positive gift for finding the most rancid operatives available to do the most rancid kind of work. By the time the election rolled around, the whole Trump operation had rats in its brains and poisonous spiders in its blood. It produced not a presidency, but a wart-ridden golem of a presidency, wandering and staggering around the landscape with bits of its pestiferous flesh falling into the public prints every day. Good Christ, what has this country done?

  Charles P Pierce

You'll get no argument from me.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 5/2 18:

In other no-surprise-here news...

UPDATE 5/2 18:

Ask and ye shall receive

Bill Moyers and attorney Steven Harper have created a timeline (updated regularly) of the Trump-Russian connection to date.

Here's Moyer's interview of Harper.

Bill Moyers: You’re the consummate trial lawyer with a celebrated reputation for summing up the closing argument for the jury, but from our work together on the timeline I know you also have the instincts of a journalist. So write the lede to the story this far: What’s the most important thing for us to know about the Trump/Russia connection as of today?

Steven Harper: Everything the Trump campaign told you about the connections between Trump and Russia was a lie.

Moyers: Go on.
  Bill Moyers

Continue reading.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 5/2 18:

The fallout has only just begun

Trump donor Rebekah Mercer in August 2016 asked the chief executive of a data-analytics firm working for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign whether the company could better organize the Hillary Clinton -related emails being released by WikiLeaks, according to a person familiar with their email exchange.

The previously undisclosed details from the exchange between Ms. Mercer and Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix show how an influential Trump supporter was looking to leverage the hacked Clinton-related messages to boost Mr. Trump’s campaign.

[...]

In the email, Ms. Mercer asked Mr. Nix whether the suggested organization of the emails was something Cambridge Analytica or the Government Accountability Institute—a conservative nonprofit that focuses on investigative research—could do, the person said. Ms. Mercer has sat on the board of the institute, which has received funding from her family.

[...]

Cambridge Analytica is partly owned by Ms. Mercer and her father, hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer.

[...]

Ms. Mercer had a prominent role in the Trump campaign effort. The Mercer family gave $2 million to super PACs backing Mr. Trump. Beyond their donations, the Mercers were highly influential in the campaign: In August, about a week before Ms. Mercer sent her email regarding WikiLeaks, the Mercers recommended Mr. Trump install Mr. Bannon and Kellyanne Conway, two of their top allies, to lead his campaign. Mr. Trump heeded their advice.

[...]

As The Wall Street Journal previously reported, Ms. Mercer and a person close to her had a brief conversation regarding Mrs. Clinton’s deleted emails in June 2016, a month after Mr. Cruz had dropped out of the race, the person said. The person said they discussed whether it would make sense to try to access and release those emails, but ultimately decided that looking for them would create “major legal liabilities” and would be a “terrible idea.”

  WSJ

One of many.

The Journal also reported that longtime Republican operative Peter W. Smith in 2016 mounted a campaign to obtain the same 33,000 emails, which he believed were stolen from Mrs. Clinton’s private server, likely by Russian hackers. Mr. Smith died in mid-May at age 81.

And, suddenly, that's looking suspicious again.

Special counsel Robert Mueller is examining what, if any, role former Trump adviser and aide Mike Flynn may have played in Mr. Smith’s effort, as part of the larger probe into whether Trump associates colluded with Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election, the Journal reported earlier this year.

And, today...

Robert Mercer, a billionaire investor who is a big financial backer of many conservative causes and a patron of the former White House adviser Stephen K. Bannon, is stepping down as co-chief executive of Renaissance Technologies, the giant hedge fund.

[...]

Beyond donating to political campaigns, Mr. Mercer was a large financial backer of Cambridge Analytica, a voter-data firm that worked with the presidential campaign of President Trump.

[...]

The one-paragraph letter to investors did not give a reason for Mr. Mercer’s decision.

[...]

In the letter on Thursday, Mr. Mercer said that he was selling his stake in Breitbart to his daughters “for personal reasons.”

  NYT

Not even holding his Breitbart stock? I smell fish.

Renaissance manages more than $50 billion in assets.

Whose assets? I smell fish.

The Mercers were responsible for bringing Bannon and Kellyanne Conway to the Trump team, so I've no doubt they were a lot deeper in the Russian hacking/collusion story than we've heretofore heard.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 5/2 18: