March 19, 2018: Cambridge Analytica Did Dirty Work for the Trump Campaign

 

3/19/18: Trump starts a new week the same way he ended the old, tweet-raging about the Russia investigation. We can assume his mood did not improve as the hours passed. The stock market took a tumble after it was revealed Facebook was duped into allowing a data-mining operation to steal the personal information of 50,000,000 users. What was the name of the company that did the mining? Cambridge Analytica. Who used that firm during his or her campaign for president? 

Trump. 

Using social media to shift voter opinion.

Christopher Wylie, who helped start the company before turning whistleblower, described how stolen data could be used in any political campaign:  

Cambridge Analytica will try to pick at whatever mental weakness or vulnerability that we think you [the voter whose data has been mined] have and try to warp your perception of what’s real around you. If you are looking to create an information weapon, the battle space you operate in is social media [emphasis added]. That is where the fight happens.

 

What kind of sleazy rats run Cambridge? Of course, there’s a Russian-American, Professor Aleksandr Kogan, involved! Kogan lied to Facebook, the site says, and got a digital foot in the door.

 

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They could “send some girls around to the candidate’s house,” he said, adding that Ukrainian girls “are very beautiful, I find that works very well.” 

Alexander Nix of SCL, on methods used to win political support

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Channel 4 News in Britain, where Strategic Communications Laboratories Group (SCL), the parent company of Cambridge, is located, recently began investigating company practices. An undercover reporter “posing as a fixer for a very wealthy client” from Sri Lanka was sent to seek help from Chief Executive Alexander Nix of SCL. Here’s how Nix explained [punctuation follows the British rule] the way the company worked, all for the right price: 

In one exchange, when asked about digging up material on political opponents, Mr Nix said they could “send some girls around to the candidate’s house”, adding that Ukrainian girls “are very beautiful, I find that works very well”.

 

In another he said: “We’ll offer a large amount of money to the candidate, to finance his campaign in exchange for land for instance, we’ll have the whole thing recorded, we’ll blank out the face of our guy and we post it on the Internet.”

 

Offering bribes to public officials is an offence under both the UK Bribery Act and the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Cambridge Analytica operates in the UK and is registered in the United States.

 

…Mr Nix told our reporter: “…we’re used to operating through different vehicles, in the shadows, and I look forward to building a very long-term and secretive relationship with you.”

 

Along with Mr Nix, the meetings also included Mark Turnbull, the managing director of CA Political Global, and the company’s chief data officer, Dr Alex Tayler.

 

Mr Turnbull described how, having obtained damaging material on opponents, Cambridge Analytica can discreetly push it onto social media and the internet.

He said: “… we just put information into the bloodstream of the internet, and then, and then watch it grow, give it a little push every now and again… like a remote control. It has to happen without anyone thinking, ‘that’s propaganda’, because the moment you think ‘that’s propaganda’, the next question is, ‘who’s put that out?’.”

 

Mr Nix also said: “…Many of our clients don’t want to be seen to be working with a foreign company… so often we set up, if we are working then we can set up fake IDs and websites, we can be students doing research projects attached to a university, we can be tourists, there’s so many options we can look at. I have lots of experience in this.”

 

In the meetings, the executives boasted that Cambridge Analytica and its parent company Strategic Communications Laboratories (SCL) had worked in more than two hundred elections across the world, including Nigeria, Kenya, the Czech Republic, India and Argentina.

 

As expected, a spokesman for the British company denied any illegal activities had occurred.

 

Just for fun, who do you imagine worked with Cambridge on this side of the Atlantic, possibly in an illegal way, to shape the 2016 election? How about one-time Trump campaign manager Cory Lewandowski! 

Not to mention – but, yes, him, too – “Sloppy Steve” Bannon. 

We also learn, if we do due diligence, that Cambridge Analytica registered as a limited liability corporation in Delaware in 2013. Cambridge is a shell company, holding intellectual property rights, but with almost all work for clients carried out in the United Kingdom by people like Mr. Nix. The company is owned by Robert Mercer and his family, rich conservative mega-donors. 

According to The New York Times, during the 2016 campaign, Cambridge shared office space with Trump’s San Antonio-based digital operation and took credit for his election success.

On November 9, 2016, Nix explained, “We are thrilled that our revolutionary approach to data-driven communications played such an integral part in President-elect Donald Trump’s extraordinary win.” 

Trump’s campaign paid Cambridge $5.9 million in five separate payments and has since tried to deny any links.

BLOGGER’S NOTE (6/11/2022): When you go back to these stories there’s always more dirt to dig up. In July 2019, Facebook agreed to pay a record fine of $5 billion for its role in allowing Cambridge Analytica to harvest private data. 

In September 2020, Mr. Nix received a seven-year ban from serving as the company’s director, as punishment for his part in the scandal. “Following an extensive investigation,” British authorities noted, “our conclusions were clear that SCL Elections [the parent company of Cambridge] had repeatedly offered shady political services to potential clients over a number of years.” 

May 21, 2018: A "Spy" Infiltrates the Trump 2016 Campaign - As Do the Russians!

 

5/21/18: Following his Sunday Twitter tantrum, Donald J. Trump in part gets his way. The Department of Justice agrees to look into whether or not the F.B.I. “infiltrated” his campaign or put a “spy” in strategy meetings or set up a hidden camera to watch Melania daube on her makeup. 

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“Donald Trump had more Russian connections than Aeroflot.” 

Gary Kasparov

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Even the nit-wittiest nitwit could figure this out if they devoted five minutes to cogitation. A source, now revealed as a result of right-wing yapping, “inside” the Trump 2016 campaign, talked to three people. One was George Papadopoulos who has since pled guilty to lying to the F.B.I. 

A second was Carter Page, who shows up in the infamous Steele dossier, allegedly for traveling to Russia and talking to individuals with direct links to Vladimir Putin. Page now admits he did go to Moscow during the 2016 campaign. At first, Page denied telling anyone on the Trump team about his trip. Later he admitted he did. Then he said he didn’t meet with any high Russian officials. 

Then he said, okay, I did. 

Carter Page did travel to Russia during the campaign.

The third individual contacted was Sam Clovis. Clovis described the extent of his contacts with the “spy” during the campaign. “The meeting was very high level; it was like two faculty members sitting down in the faculty lounge talking about research. There was no indication or no inclination that this was anything other than just wanting to offer up his help to the campaign if I needed it.” No cloaks were involved. No daggers. The pair talked in a hotel lobby. Clovis didn’t have a hidden gun or a pencil that could spray chemicals. He had a cup of coffee and a notebook. 

According to Clovis he never bothered with notes. Isn’t that convenient, if you might be investigated! 

Clovis then blew a giant hole in the idea that this source was spying on everyone for the run amok F.B.I. “I’m not going to name the individual, I know exactly who it is...but I will say this: That person had nothing to do with the campaign. They were not part of the campaign.” 

So, it would seem the “spy” did not spy on Trump Sr., or Trump Jr. or Ivanka or even Barron Trump.

 

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“I don’t question Bob Mueller’s honesty or his integrity.” 

ANOTHER RABID DEMOCRAT comes to the defense of Robert Mueller and…Oh wait, he’s a Republican. It’s the man who briefly led the Trump transition team, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. 

In a speech at the University of Chicago, he tells the audience, “Bob Mueller himself is not a partisan, he’s an honest guy, he is a hard working guy, he’s smart and you can’t argue that the investigation hasn’t been effective so far.” 

Trump’s biggest problem, says Christie, including the fact he’s a pathological liar, is Trump. “There’s no way to make an investigation like this shorter,” Christie says he warned the president, “but there’s lots of ways to make it longer. He’s executed on a number of those ways to make it longer.” 

“I don’t question Bob Mueller’s honesty or his integrity,” Christie says finally, “never have, and having worked with him for years, I still wouldn’t.” 

 

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“The sad news is propaganda works.” 

SPEAKING AT a conference in New York, former Russian chess champion Gary Kasparov warns that Vladimir Putin will attack our elections again. Putin is not a democratically elected leader, Kasparov says. “He’s a dictator.” For seventeen years, Kasparov notes, the Russians have been trafficking in lies and false stories on the internet and they’re good at what they’re doing. “The sad news is propaganda works,” he told his audience. “Fake news works.” 

Did he believe our president was in the pocket of Putin? “Donald Trump had more Russian connections than Aeroflot,” he replied. “While I believe in coincidences, I also believe in the KGB.”

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE: Right-wing news will eventually begin describing Christopher Steele’s dossier as “discredited.” Bob Woodward, in his book Fear, will note that John Brennan, Director of the C.I.A. “said the information,” in Steele’s report, “was in line with their own sources, in which he had great confidence.” (Fear, p. 64.)

May 24, 2018: Trump Thinks People Who Protest in Ways He Doesn't Like Shouldn't Be in the Country

 

5/24/18: Let’s get another day in Trumpistan off to a rousing start. Fox & Friends is running a taped interview with the president. He’s stoked to hear the NFL will fine players who kneel during the National Anthem! 

After all, nothing says, “I love the land of the free, and the home of the brave” more than squelching the right to protest. 

The NFL does say players can remain in their locker rooms if they prefer. 

Trump can’t talk long before making it clear how he feels about the rights of those with whom he disagrees. “Well, I think that’s good,” he tells the three hosts, Larry, Curly, and Ainsley, referencing the fines. “I don’t think people should be staying in locker rooms. But still, I think it’s good.” 

Then Trump takes it ten steps too far. “You have to stand proudly for the national anthem, or you shouldn’t be playing, you shouldn’t be there. Maybe you shouldn’t be in the country.” 

 

“SPYGATE - a terrible thing!” 

Trump doesn’t have much chance to celebrate the news because he has a spy problem on his hands or in his head. In Trump’s muddled thinking, the F.B.I. and other federal agencies were spying on his campaign. He tweets out “evidence,” which often means he’s making it up. 

At 7:21 we get: “Clapper has now admitted that there was Spying in my campaign. Large dollars were paid to the Spy, far beyond normal. Starting to look like one of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history. SPYGATE - a terrible thing!”  

The meeting between members of Congress and representatives of the U.S. intelligence community, to get to the bottom of this Spygate mess, is on for later. (See: 5/23/18. Trump has already told the same lie about what Clapper said.)

 

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BEFORE THAT MEETING can take place, Trump learns another lesson. Diplomacy, like love, is hard. 

The much-ballyhooed June 12 summit with North Korea is canceled. 

Here, your favorite blogger should be clear. He would not fault Trump on most foreign policy matters, were Trump not so gleeful in bashing predecessors for “failures” identical to his own. Trump will take credit for every step forward the United States makes on any front. He will blame everyone else for any step back. 

This much is true in 2018 and has been true for years: None of the options to contain Kim Jong-un’s rogue regime are good. Trump is simply the latest U.S. president to discover that fact. 

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History shows that diplomacy is always messy and complex.

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This blogger would point out that history shows that diplomacy is always messy and complex. The Spartans and Athenians could not resolve their differences 2,500 years ago. The Peloponnesian War dragged on for twenty-seven years. The Israelis and Palestinians can’t settle their differences today. And, despite Jared Kushner’s best efforts, they won’t anytime soon. North Korea has been a nettle for the U.S. to grasp since attacking South Korea on June 1, 1950. 

This is the way the world works, always has worked, and always will work. Diplomacy is hard. 

China has been both an active and silent actor in what is a long-running play. In the winter of 1950, the Chinese sent hundreds of thousands of troops crashing across the Yalu River and smashed into American, South Korean and U.N. forces. Harry Truman was the first president to learn that North Korea, backed by China, would present a challenge to the interests of the United States. 

It may still prove that Trump and his team have a good backup plan despite the cancelation of talks, that perhaps back channel movements are likely. Still, it’s hard not to laugh at a fool like Trump, who wants nothing so much as to be praised. Gone for now is his chance at a Nobel Peace Prize, which, if you believe the Big Orange Buffoon, everybody was saying he deserved. 

In order to cancel the summit, Trump sends the following letter to the Chairman of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea:

 

 

Like a weird breakup letter. 

The missive reads like a weird breakup letter. “I felt a wonderful dialogue was building up between you and me,” Trump writes. “I look very much forward to meeting you” someday, the lovesick U.S. leader moans. He can’t forget Kim’s “beautiful gesture” when the romance seemed strong. He can’t believe the “tremendous anger” now directed his way. 

Like a jilted lover, Trump makes his deepest feelings clear. If he can’t have Kim, no one can! He’ll blow him to bits. “You talk about your nuclear capabilities, but ours are so massive and powerful that I pray to God they will never have to be used.” 

Of course, there’s a reason no nation has exploded an atomic bomb on an enemy in 73 years. If we use our “massive” nuclear arsenal we’re going to roast millions of men, women, and children. Most would be innocent human beings who don’t like Kim any more than good Americans do. 

Kim has the capacity to hit targets in the continental United States, which is new, and not Trump’s fault. Yet we must remember, previous presidents had to consider a similar dilemma. They knew Kim had the ability to turn Seoul (and possibly Tokyo) into a smoking hole in the ground. The only difference between 2006, when North Korea got its first nuclear bomb, and 2018, is that Los Angeles is now in range. 

But at least we’ve got a few cool medallions (coined before the meeting was canceled) we can toss and flip. 

Naturally, they show Trump’s face. (See: 6/1/18.)

 

 

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WITH HOPES for a Nobel dashed, Trump can console himself knowing there’s a meeting scheduled to consider spying on his campaign. 

 

“Nothing particularly surprising.” 

According to the propaganda people at Fox News, this meeting will allow Congress to get to the bottom of the Spygate mess. For some odd reason, Democrats in Congress think they should attend. 

One meeting becomes two. 

Devin Nunes and Trey Gowdy attend the first. Speaker Paul Ryan tags along. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, F.B.I. Director Christopher Wray, and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats arrive. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has secured a seat, after Democrats point out that Trump’s interest in “total transparency” (see: 5/23/18) might be more believable if members of both parties were allowed to take part. 

But then the tale takes an odd twist. Remember, this is a meeting called because Congress has a duty to exercise oversight over the Executive Branch. To the surprise of nearly everyone, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Trump defense lawyer Emmet Flood appear. 

Flood is indubitably not a member of Congress. He has no reason to be sitting in a meeting such as this, unless to get the scoop on what investigators might know about his boss. 

And if Congress is trying to ensure proper oversight over the Executive Branch, why is Kelly there? 

Kelly and Flood, at least according to White House Press Secretary Pinocchio, speak briefly and leave. 

A Republican congressional staffer, hearing they appeared, says, “That’s the craziest shit I ever heard.”

 

A second meeting is required because several top congressional leaders were unable to attend the first. Those present are Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer for the Democrats, Nunes again, Sen. Mark Warren, a Democrat, and Sen. Richard Burr and Sen. Milksop Mitch for the Republicans. The same three intelligence heads give a similar briefing to the group. 

On Fox News, soon after, Brett Baier asks Milksop Mitch to describe the meeting just ended.  

“Were you surprised by what you learned?” Baier wants to know. Were there, like, dozens of spies!!!! 

“Nothing particularly surprising,” Milksop replies. “But again, it was classified, so there’s no real, no real report I can give to you.”

 

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MEANWHILE, DETAILS about the idiocy and mendacity of President Trump continue to spill out. 

Two days ago, after watching too much cable news, Trump claimed the F.B.I. informant who talked to three members of his campaign had been paid “a massive amount of money … many times higher than normal” to spy on his campaign. That informant, now revealed to be Stefan Halper, looks a lot less suspicious if one turns off the television and searches for truth. As Politifact notes, his biography impresses. Halper is “professor emeritus at Cambridge University in England where he lectures on international security issues. He served as deputy assistant secretary of state for Political-Military Affairs in the Reagan administration.” 

At the time he was being paid to talk to three members of the Trump team (see: 5/21/18), he was also working on a study of Russian-Chinese relationships, and Halper was paid by the Pentagon, not the F.B.I. 

The tab for all his work, both “spying” on Trump and doing Pentagon research, came to $244,960. 

Guess how much Halper earned working for the Pentagon from 9/29/2017 to 3/29/2018, while Trump had his fanny planted on his Oval Office throne? Halper earned $411,575 on Trump’s watch.

 

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IN RELATED NEWS, the president told allies earlier in the week that he wanted “to brand” Halper a “spy,” not an informant. According to the Associated Press, he told confidants he thought that sounded more ominous, and would stir up his base. Typically, whether he had the facts straight or not, never entered into the calculations of the President of the United States.

September 7, 2018: First Member of Trump Campaign Sentenced to Jail

 

9/7/18: George Papadopoulos, the first member of the Trump campaign to be sentenced to jail, gets off easy, with 14 days behind bars. 

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“The president hindered the investigation more than George Papadopoulos ever could.” 

Thomas M. Breen, lawyer for George Papadopoulos

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Papadopoulos highlighted at left center.

 

Trump fans will imagine that this proves there’s “no there there” in the Russia investigation. George, the convicted felon and purported “coffee boy,” might beg to differ. He explains to the judge why he lied to the F.B.I. during the early stages of the investigation. He was thrilled to be working for the Trump campaign. “I was surrounded by important people. I was young and ambitious and excited.” 

His lawyer, Thomas M. Breen tries to shift blame from his client to the president. “The president of the United States hindered this investigation more than George Papadopoulos ever could,” Mr. Breen argues in court. 

Naturally, when asked about the case by reporters aboard Air Force One, during a trip to Fargo, N.D., Trump tries to act nonchalant. “I see Papadopoulos today; I don’t know Papadopoulos, I don’t know,” the president says. “They got him, on I guess, on a couple of lies.” 

All those lies benefited Trump. (See: 8/21/18.)