Trump-tied data execs told of hookers, lies, bribes
CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA executives bragged about trapping candidates with prostitutes and quietly flooding elections around the world with misinformation, according to a report.
The company, which was hired for a time by the Trump presidential campaign, is at the center of a major scandal after Facebook admitted the firm purged data on 50 million users.
But using data to influence voters was just part of how Cambridge influenced elections, according to an undercover report by Britain’s Channel 4 News.
“It sounds dreadful to say, but these are things that we don’t necessarily need to be true, as long as they’re believed,” Alexander Nix, the company’s CEO, is seen telling an undercover “fixer.” Nix and associate Mark Turnbull bragged to the fixer — who posed as a Sri Lankan operative looking to hire them — about ways to set up stings and damage a candidate.
Tactics included sending “some girls around to the candidate’s house,” such as Ukrainian women, who “are very beautiful,” Nix told the phony operative. He floated another scenario in which an operative would pose as a rich developer looking to make an arrangement with a candidate. “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,” he said.
Ex-Trump adviser Stephen Bannon once served as an executive at Cambridge Analytica, which was funded by conservative billionaire Robert Mercer. Special counsel Robert Mueller has requested emails from company staffers who reportedly did work for the Trump campaign.
Cambridge Analytica vehemently fought the report, tried to block it from airing and denied the claims made in the videos.
“We entirely refute any allegation that Cambridge Analytica or any of its affiliates use entrapment, bribes or so-called “honey-traps” for any purpose whatsoever,” the company said in a statement to Channel 4.
Facebook has suspended Cambridge Analytica amid reports it purged data from millions of users.
The data was extracted through an app developed and given to the company by University of Cambridge Prof. Aleksandr Kogan — telling Facebook the information was deleted, according to reports and self-identified whistleblower Christopher Wylie.
Lawmakers on both sides of the Atlantic want answers on the data breach, as well as the company’s alleged role in the Brexit vote that put Britain on track to leave the European Union.