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You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Russiagate Open Thread: Cambridge Analytica Apocrylyptica

Russiagate Open Thread: Cambridge Analytica Apocrylyptica

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Alexander Nix, who heads a controversial data-analytics firm that worked for President Donald Trump’s campaign, wrote in an email last year that he reached out to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange about Hillary Clinton’s missing 33,000 emails.

Nix, who heads Cambridge Analytica, told a third party that he reached out to Assange about his firm somehow helping the WikiLeaks editor release Clinton’s missing emails, according to two sources familiar with a congressional investigation into interactions between Trump associates and the Kremlin. Those sources also relayed that, according to Nix’s email, Assange told the Cambridge Analytica CEO that he didn’t want his help, and preferred to do the work on his own.

If the claims Nix made in that email are true, this would be the closest known connection between Trump’s campaign and Assange…

Those 33,000 messages were a central focus of Trump and his allies during the campaign. At least one Republican operative tried to recruit hackers to obtain those emails, according to The Wall Street Journal. And at a press conference on July 27, 2016, while the Democratic National Convention was underway, Trump—then the Republican nominee—said he hoped the Kremlin would recover those emails.

“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’ll be able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” he said.

And on the campaign trail, Trump praised WikiLeaks and tweeted about its findings. Politifact calculated that he mentioned the site about 137 times during the campaign….

Roger Stone, a longtime adviser to Trump, was in touch with Assange through an intermediary. The House Intelligence Committee is pushing Stone to share the identity of that intermediary with them. So far, he has not complied.

Robert and Rebekah Mercer, a billionaire father-daughter duo that spent big to boost Trump’s presidential candidacy, are major investors in Cambridge Analytica. Robert Mercer co-manages a hedge fund that drew scrutiny from congressional investigators in 2014 for using questionable banking tactics to allegedly dodge paying upward of $7 billion in taxes. Steve Bannon, formerly a senior White House aide, was on the company’s board before he joined the White House. He has worked with the Mercers on multiple conservative projects, and Bloomberg News reported he previously had holdings in Cambridge Analytica valued at between $1 million and $5 million.

The Trump campaign paid Cambridge Analytica millions for its work. A former Trump campaign staffer previously told The Daily Beast that the firm did very little actual work for the campaign…

(Wonder where Brad Parscale is tonight… )

I had a college acquaintance — let’s call him Clyde — a certified (as he was only too happy to share) Very Smart Person and frontrunning tech adopter. Clyde was forever brimming with brilliant, state-of-the-moment business ideas that were bound to make a fortune, should they ever get past the “soliciting other people’s seed money” stage. After the first half-dozen failures to launch, his friends started saying, “Is this real, or is this a Clyde-scheme?”

Seems quite possible to me, even likely, that Mr. Nix’s plan to have Wikileaks steal Clinton’s emails was the political equivalent of a Clyde-scheme — something that sounded good (at least to the Mercers) without being doable. But if thousands of crime dramas and a whole lot of successful FBI “stings” are any guide, soliciting someone to commit an admittedly criminal action can be prosecuted even if the crime never takes place…

In any case, it sure seems like the Mercers are eager to throw away their millions on half-bright schemes of world domination. Wonder how many other professional grifters this FUBAR is going to attract?

Reader Interactions

121Comments

  1. 1.

    Mike in NC

    Slightly OT, but Frontline on PBS at 10 PM is running Part 1 of their exploration of Putin’s interest in swinging the US 2016 presidential election.

  2. 2.

    Villago Delenda Est

    I am so looking forward to the Ecuadorian Embassy kicking Julian’s ass into the loving arms of MI6.

  4. 4.

    encephalopath

    When the wingnut dirtbags bring up 33K missing Clinton emails, what the eff are they talking about? At this point I have no idea.

    Last I heard the FBI had all the Clinton SoS emails. Is this some Trumpist urban legend that they managed to fashion into “history” in the fever swamp forges?

  8. 8.

    tobie

    @encephalopath: I would love some clarification of this, too. My understanding is that the FBI had physical possession of Clinton’s server from 2015. Presumably they’d be able to track even deleted emails on it. In fact I thought some time in 2016 they confirmed they had everything but I have to check. If I recall it was an NPR report.

  10. 10.

    But her emails!!!

    I’m not sure Nunes was trying to get ahead of anything. This massive Russia-Hillary collusion push that’s going on using repackaged old information and debunked conspiracy theories smells to high heaven like a plan that has been in the works for awhile. You have Fox News and all the Right Wing Sites pushing it, while congress opens multiple related inquiries, a Wingnut linked organization files an FEC complaint related to payments to FusionGPS for the Steele dossier and multiple mainstream media companies like the NY Times, Washington Post, CNN, etc. all headlining stories that treat old information as if it were somehow earth shattering breaking news. This is big, coordinated and there’s favors and pressure being exerted by multiple major players going on here.

    Oh, and did I mention all the Russian bots jumping on it as well?

  11. 11.

    Adam L Silverman

    @encephalopath: @tobie: Secretary Clinton hired an external law firm to review every email she sent via her personal account through the Clinton server after she stepped down as Secretary of State. The firm established a protocol, which it ran by the State Department folks responsible for archiving her official work emails, to separate emails that had anything to do with her work/official duties and those that were purely personal. Approximately 33,000 emails over the course of her four and a 1/2 years (give or take a month) as Secretary of State were deemed to be purely personal and held back from what was turned over to State for archiving according to the National Records Act. That’s what they’re talking about. My understanding from the reporting on her emails, as well as Director Comey’s testimony about all of this to various congressional committees, is that the FBI was actually able to reconstitute every one of her emails that went through her server during that time period, work related and personal, as part of their review.

  12. 12.

    encephalopath

    @Adam L Silverman:

    That’s what I remember as well without looking up anything. So anyone who is talking about missing emails now is handing out received wisdom pulled from their asses.

  13. 13.

    Anne Laurie

    @Adam L Silverman: Given how many emails it takes for a dozen Balloon Juice commentors to meet up at a Boston-area restaurant, I’d conservatively estimate that some 25K of those ‘missing’ emails concerned the planning for Chelsea’s wedding.

  16. 16.

    tobie

    @But her emails!!!: I read that Elias himself disclosed that his law firm hired FusionGPS to do oppo research on Trump since it was going to come out soon in any event. Either the House or Senate Intelligence Committee had subpoenaed FusionGPSs’s banking records to find out who specifically paid them. That doesn’t means there was not a coordinated effort to put Clinton’s name in the news again and accuse her of endless scandals. I imagine that Mueller’s investigation is proceeding apace and Trump’s in the hot seat. I suppose Trump & Co figured that the NYT would continue to be an eager outlet for Trump-aganda and unfortunately they were right. I saw today that Haberman was dubbed MAGA Haberman. Seems appropriate.

  19. 19.

    Adam L Silverman

    @tobie: What happened was that Nunes subpoenaed Fusion GPS bank demanding to know who paid for it. Fusion GPS then sought an injunction to prevent the bank from turning over any financial info to Nunes. Before that suit could be ruled on the bank turned over the info. Or at least the info about Elias. It is still unclear who the original GOP funder for Fusion GPS’s work on this was however.

  22. 22.

    Gvg

    The “missing” emails were recovered some time ago, but significantly after their reputation had entered the general populations awareness. The news of recovery could not banish the established narrative. Republican’s who even knew, had no incentive to try to announce. I don’t think most of the FBI think they are supposed to announce progress in every tiny little thing from an investigation, especially since even charges were always in doubt. Frankly I would expect that at least 1/2 of them knew all along the investigation was a political witch hunt waste of their time and resources. It would be bad form for them to have had repeated loud news conferences to say we got em all and nothing found. Nothing less could have shut down the Clinton bashing reflex IMO.
    It took too long to get them. Most people will never learn they were all recovered.

  25. 25.

    guachi

    @schrodingers_cat:

    OT: Commenter Leto first pointed this out, I jumped at him for which I am sorry.
    But BP has detained a 10 year old girl recovering from surgery in Texas. Her name is Maria Rosa. They are not releasing her to her family.

    So from the story she’s an illegal immigrant who’s using taxpayer dollars to pay for her surgery.

  26. 26.

    tobie

    @Adam L Silverman: Thanks for the clarification. I thought it was Elias who admitted he paid Fusion GPS. If the bank turned over the info, wouldn’t we also know who on the Republican side had hired the firm?

    Do you know the name of the bank by the way? I’m curious what financial institution was so afraid of Nunes, Trump and the GOP that they would turn over confidential information without a court order.

  28. 28.

    Mnemosyne

    @guachi:

    So from the story she’s an illegal immigrant who’s using taxpayer dollars to pay for her surgery.

    Which is why ICE is trying to throw her out in the street still wearing her colostomy bag. Because that’s the kind of compassionate country we are now.

  29. 29.

    Thru the Looking Glass...

    @encephalopath:

    So anyone who is talking about missing emails now is handing out received wisdom pulled from their asses.

    Must be the same place they’re getting all this scandalous intel about Dems paying for the Fusion GPS dossier…

  30. 30.

    guachi

    @schrodingers_cat: Did you read the article?

    An Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy discourages enforcement actions at sensitive locations — including hospitals, schools, places of worship, public ceremonies or demonstrations.

    Sure, they can do it in certain circumstances as the article states but as of yet we don’t know if they are or not.

    Personally, I think they should bill the mother for use of taxpayer services and then deport her after her daughter has recovered.

  31. 31.

    Mnemosyne

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Not just that, but removed from her aunt’s custody and deported alone. Apparently no one from ICE has bothered to contact her mother, so who knows what they’re planning to do other than carry her 10 feet over the border and abandon her.

  33. 33.

    Major Major Major Major

    @guachi:

    Rosamaria, who was brought to the U.S. illegally by her mother when she was about 3 months old, is a recipient of state’s Special Health Care Needs Services Program, Delacruz said. The Texas Health and Human Services program helps children with special health-care needs.

  37. 37.

    randy khan

    Of course the Trump campaign wanted the 33,000 “missing” emails. There’s no way they were smart enough to realize that they weren’t missing.

  39. 39.

    Major Major Major Major

    Speaking of… Mark Joseph Stern at Slate sez:

    The Democrats’ Next Supreme Court Nominee
    Meet Patricia Millett, the hero of the Jane Doe abortion case and a worthy successor to Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

    Over the past five days, Judge Patricia Millett performed the judicial equivalent of a triple axel. Millett, who sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, first dissented from a decision by a three-judge panel delaying an undocumented minor’s abortion. Her dissent was so powerful that when the full D.C. Circuit eventually reversed the panel’s ruling, it did nothing more than explain in a single paragraph that Millett had it right. The judge then took a well-earned victory lap, penning a trenchant concurrence that excoriated her conservative colleague’s anti-abortion, anti-immigrant casuistry. Her brilliant performance secured a vulnerable young woman’s right to bodily autonomy. It should also earn Millett a spot at the very top of the Supreme Court shortlist the next time a Democratic president gets tasked with making a selection.

  40. 40.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Gin & Tonic: Perhaps. Given that Putin has already had the Russians suspected of being the sources for Steele, I’m not sure the FSB really cares.

  41. 41.

    guachi

    @Major Major Major Major: I read the article. That’s why I said she’s an illegal immigrant who’s using tax payers to pay for her surgery. Think about it. This is the exact thing anti-immigrant conservatives keep going on about – illegal immigrants getting free health care. Here’s an example in the flesh.

  43. 43.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    Republicans are losing it. I think the ones who put out the marching orders are freaking out or something, and the drones who suck it all up and then spew it back out are dutifully saying what they’re told. I’ve seen two people I know talking up the “Hillary Clinton somehow conspired with Putin!” horseshit on Facebook today.

    Shit. I just want this horror show to be over.

  45. 45.

    Mnemosyne

    @guachi:

    This is the exact thing anti-immigrant conservatives keep going on about – illegal immigrants getting free health care. Here’s an example in the flesh.

    Yes, but normal people turn to those anti-immigrant conservatives and say, What the fuck is wrong with you? She’s 10 years old, you stupid asshole!

  51. 51.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Adam L Silverman: I mean, if the GOP doesn’t have the majority in the senate, they can’t pull a Gorsuch.

    @guachi:

    I read the article. That’s why I said she’s an illegal immigrant who’s using tax payers to pay for her surgery.

    Those two sentences are not, actually, connected in a straight chain of cause-and-effect. Somewhere in there you decided to phrase it that way, to give it the most inflammatory, pro-republican spin possible. Why? You could just as easily have said she’s a perfect example of a DREAM’er who needs our protection–a poor, sick child here through no fault of her own.

  52. 52.

    guachi

    @Mnemosyne: Is that the cutoff for free health care? 10? There’s nothing in the article stating it was life or death or she was in immediate danger. She might have been, but there’s nothing in the article that states it.

    So by your reasoning the state of Texas should pay for all (most? some?) health care for illegal immigrants under the age of 10 as long as they can make it to an American hospital? Where’s your cutoff for age and medical need for the state of Texas to pay for this healthcare?

  54. 54.

    Major Major Major Major

    @guachi:

    So by your reasoning the state of Texas should pay for all (most? some?) health care for illegal immigrants under the age of 10 as long as they can make it to an American hospital?

    Well, maybe if there are special circumstances like SHE WAS BROUGHT HERE WHEN SHE WAS THREE MONTHS OLD.

  64. 64.

    Mnemosyne

    @Major Major Major Major:

    You could just as easily have said she’s a perfect example of a DREAM’er who needs our protection–a poor, sick child here through no fault of her own.

    But he never will, because he’s a sociopath who thinks a 10-year-old deserves to suffer and die for the crime of being brought here as an infant. He doesn’t give a shit that she had no say in the matter. He just wants her to suffer as much as possible because of her parents’ decisions.

  68. 68.

    Mike in NC

    Part 1 of “Putin’s Revenge” on Frontline was amazing and next week Part 2 will show how they found a moron puppet to install in the White House.

  73. 73.

    tobie

    @Adam L Silverman: Good link. Thanks. The bank subpoenaed by Nunes for Fusion GPS’s banking records was TD Bank. I can only surmise that Elias, Fusion GPS and/or the bank didn’t wait for a court order because they were pretty sure they would lose in court. This, of course, hasn’t stopped Republicans from stonewalling the committee.

  80. 80.

    Ruckus

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
    I have friends on FB who post something and have a long time friend of theirs go off the pier about how President Obama fucked up every thing, every day or how great drumpf is at fixing everything and I wonder how they got out of the asylum, they are so delusional that it’s quite possible that they are unable to feed themselves.
    I just wonder if it is at all possible to actually repair any of the damage that is happening now. I hate to be a downer but this country is so divided by stupidity and hate that I wonder if it is even worth trying to save. OK I know it is, there are millions of people who aren’t delusional but that’s not how it often feels.

  83. 83.

    jl

    I don’t have time to follow all the ins and outs of dirt Cambridge Analytica pulled, and who was grifting who.

    I think some of the schemes look goofy in retrospect because, at the time, the GOP and Trumpsters were convinced that there were secret, supposedly deleted HRC e-mails that contained such outrageous explosive stuff, that every Democrat in the country would wind up in jail..Deceased Democrats would be disinterred, cremated and then the ashes shot into space to purge the earth of the stain, . or something….

    Someone, somewhere, somehow, would uncover the holy cache of 30,000 secret HRC emails that would contain her contract with Satan, formula to blow up the universe into quantum glop, Clintons having sex with giant pigeons, and, just, everything! Yes, the magic e-mail cache was worth anything and everything. No scheme to get them was too crazy, wild, sketchy or illegal.

  85. 85.

    jonas

    @Adam L Silverman:

    It is still unclear who the original GOP funder for Fusion GPS’s work on this was however.

    It’s been widely reported to have been either the Jeb Bush campaign, or an associated PAC.

  87. 87.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Ruckus:

    Mr opiejeanne and I will be in SoCal by Friday and don’t have to be back in Seattle until the 15th, so is anyone interested in a meet up? Bill in Glendale is already on board.

    So I guess they’re getting here on the 27th.

  92. 92.

    Citizen_X

    @guachi:

    Where’s your cutoff for age and medical need for the state of Texas to pay for this healthcare?

    Way the fuck over 10, I’ll tell you that.

  96. 96.

    Raoul

    So, my guess is the Trump camp got tipped that this Cambridge story was going to drop this week, and that is why our stenographic idiots got spoon fed the Clinton dossier “story” (air quotes because there is no substance to it.
    Crank the fog machine, whip up Maggie Haberman, etc, before the actually bad, should be damaging to the right wing news drops.
    Dammit.

  100. 100.

    Mnemosyne

    @Citizen_X:

    I quite honestly don’t understand the mentality that looks at a 10-year-old getting emergency surgery and immediately thinks she should have been allowed to die because she’s poor and here illegally.

    I guess that’s how Trump managed to win. Assholes like guachi can’t be bothered to think about anyone other than themselves and their own selfish wants.

    And on that note, I have offline stuff to do. Good night, all.

  108. 108.

    opiejeanne

    @Mnemosyne: We’ll be in town until the 13th, so that’s two more weekends that we could get together. We’re in Yreka tonight, probably stopping tomorrow just before Grapevine, and getting to the cabin on Friday. Will be fighting the spiders and stocking the fridge for at least a day. Our son will probably come up this weekend. Anything to get out of the heat. I heard it was hotter in Anaheim than Yuma on Tuesday. Yikes.

  109. 109.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @guachi: YES

    It’s the humane thing to do.

    Of course, trumpanzees have no idea what being humane is all about, as they’re racist assholes.

  111. 111.

    MoxieM

    @Adam L Silverman: Unless someone’s said it first: I don’t wanna go to (Chelsea).

    It has to be stated.

    ooo super late to the party… I still wouldn’t go there, although the big fire of 1973 was stunningly stunning.

  114. 114.

    opiejeanne

    @Ruckus: Friday. We get into town on Friday. Gotta go on up to the cabin to fight the spiders We haven’t been there since early March but a friend borrowed the place for a couple of weekends when there was a late snow.

  115. 115.

    opiejeanne

    @Omnes Omnibus: We stayed right there, in a hotel a block off of Bayswater on Lancaster Gate, facing the side of the old church that is now part of an apartment building. During WWII a plane clipped the top of the spire but landed safely in Hyde park. If you look carefully you can see the repair.

  117. 117.

    mike in dc

    The Uranium One/Clinton-paid-for-the-dossier stuff is part of a drive to:
    1) distract from the Trump-Russia investigation
    2) undermine the congressional investigations of collusion and interference
    3) create a rationale for firing Mueller and stopping the investigation
    4) barring 3, to at least muddy the waters and diminish the potential impact of a finding of Trump campaign complicity/criminality upon the electorate, the Republican base, and the Republican Congress

  118. 118.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @mike in dc: Just saw this

    Derek Todorojo‏ @ DerekTodorojo
    From what I understand, Mueller would have thirty days before removal. I know I’m The Dumbest Person on the Internet™, but even I know that Mueller has a contingency plan – a dead man’s switch, as it were – already in place should this moment arise.

  121. 121.

    sm*t cl*de

    @encephalopath:

    So anyone who is talking about missing emails now is handing out received wisdom pulled from their asses.

    It’s Human Centipede al the way down.

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