Trump campaign consultants allegedly caught bragging about crooked tactics
The data-analysis company that did work for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign bragged about going to crooked lengths — including using Ukrainian sex workers, cash bribes and fake IDs — to secretly swing elections, according to a report Monday.
Alexander Nix, the chief executive of Cambridge Analytica, was caught on tape boasting to an undercover reporter for Channel 4 News in the UK about how his firm works “in the shadows.”
“It sounds a dreadful thing to say, but these are things that don’t necessarily need to be true as long as they’re believed,” he told the reporter, according to the Guardian.
The reporter was posing as a fixer for a wealthy client working to get candidates elected in Sri Lanka. The potentially damning exchanges were recorded between November 2017 and January 2018.
When asked about smearing an opposing candidate, Nix proposed using “very beautiful” Ukrainian woman and said his company could “send some girls around to the candidate’s house.”
“I find that works very well,” he said.
In another exchange, Nix suggested using cash.
“We’ll offer a large amount of money to the candidate, to finance his campaign in exchange for land for instance,” he said. “We’ll have the whole thing recorded, we’ll blank out the face of our guy and we post it on the Internet.”
Nix told the 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.”
He also told the reporter that his company works with ex-spies from Britain and Israel to dig up political dirt on candidates, according to the Guardian.
Nix and other executives bragged that Cambridge Analytica and its parent company Strategic Communications Laboratories worked in more than 200 elections across the globe, including in Nigeria, Kenya, the Czech Republic, India and Argentina.
“…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,” Nix explained. “I have lots of experience in this.”
The meetings with the undercover journalist also included Mark Turnbull, the managing director of CA Political Global, who described discreetly planting the damaging information online.
“… 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,” Turnbull said. “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?’”
Cambridge Analytica, which was hired by the Trump campaign, is accused of improperly obtaining information for 50 million Facebook users.
Facebook has since suspended Cambridge Analytica and SCL.
On Monday, UK Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham told Channel 4 News that she was seeking a warrant to search Cambridge Analytica’s London offices Tuesday.
“I think we should all be shocked by this,” Denham said.
Facebook also announced Monday that it hired Stroz Friedberg, a digital forensics firm, to conduct an audit into Cambridge Analytica.
Facebook said the company agreed to comply and open up its servers and systems to Stroz Friedberg.
It asked two other people involved, Christopher Wylie and Aleksandr Kogan, to also comply with the audit. Kogan agreed, while Wylie declined.
“This is part of a comprehensive internal and external review that we are conducting to determine the accuracy of the claims that the Facebook data in question still exists,” Facebook said in a post. “This is data Cambridge Analytica, SCL, Mr. Wylie, and Mr. Kogan certified to Facebook had been destroyed. If this data still exists, it would be a grave violation of Facebook’s policies and an unacceptable violation of trust and the commitments these groups made.”
Cambridge Analytica has denied any wrongdoing and has claimed SCL hired Kogan for a “large scale research project in the US.” The company has claimed its deleted all of the user data it received from Kogan’s company.
Cambridge Analytica vehemently denied Channel 4’s report.
“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…” a spokesman said. “We routinely undertake conversations with prospective clients to try to tease out any unethical or illegal intentions…”
He added, “Cambridge Analytica does not use untrue material for any purpose.”