Russian To Judgment, Con't

Yesterday I pointed out how Steve Bannon's data analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica, stole 50 million voter Facebook profiles in 2014 to use in 2016.

The election may not have been stolen, but it was manipulated with a precision that would have impressed even the most jaded sci-fi writers and futurists.  Now, combine Cambridge Analytica's voter data trove with Russia's Internet Research Agency, indicted by Robert Mueller for election meddling, and you start to see exactly how Trump's 2016 victory went down.

Cambridge had the data but didn't have the propaganda resources. IRA had the propaganda experience and the social media bot army but needed the voter data to seed their operation and pick their target groups for maximum effectiveness.

This, folks, was the most likely collusion.  It worked well enough to put Trump in the White house despite losing by more than 3 million votes.  And in my view, it's a question of when, not if, Robert Mueller can show a link between Cambridge and Steve Bannon and the Russian IRA operation.

It didn't even take 24 hours for the NY Times to find that link.

When the Russia question came up during a hearing at the British Parliament last month, Alexander Nix did not hesitate.

“We’ve never worked in Russia,” said Mr. Nix, head of a data consulting firm that advised the Trump campaign on targeting voters.

“As far as I’m aware, we’ve never worked for a Russian company,” Mr. Nix added. “We’ve never worked with a Russian organization in Russia or any other country, and we don’t have any relationship with Russia or Russian individuals.”

But Mr. Nix’s business did have some dealings with Russian interests, according to company documents and interviews.

Mr. Nix is a director of SCL Group, a British political and defense contractor, and chief executive of its American offshoot, Cambridge Analytica, which advised the Trump campaign. The firms’ employees, who often overlap, had contact in 2014 and 2015 with executives from Lukoil, the Russian oil giant.

Lukoil was interested in how data was used to target American voters, according to two former company insiders who said there were at least three meetings with Lukoil executives in London and Turkey. SCL and Lukoil denied that the talks were political in nature, and SCL also said there were no meetings in London.

The contacts took place as Cambridge Analytica was building a roster of Republican political clients in the United States — and harvesting the Facebook profiles of over 50 million users to develop tools it said could analyze voters’ behavior.

Cambridge Analytica also included extensive questions about Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, in surveys it was carrying out in American focus groups in 2014. It is not clear what — or which client — prompted the line of questioning, which asked for views on topics ranging from Mr. Putin’s popularity to Russian expansionism.

On two promotional documents obtained by The New York Times, SCL said it did business in Russia. In both documents, the country is highlighted on world maps that specify the location of SCL clients, with one of the maps noting that the clients were for the firm’s elections division. In a statement, SCL said an employee had done “commercial work” about 25 years ago “for a private company in Russia.”

Lukoil is run by Vagit Alekperov, a former oil minister under Putin.  Putin knows the guy pretty well, as both men have gotten very, very wealthy off of Russian oil.  Lukoil has done business in the US for a long time, if you remember that picture of Chuck Schumer and Putin eating Krispy Kreme in 2003, it was at Lukoil's grand opening of its first gas station in Manhattan.

And now Putin owns our government.

By the way, there's a 100% chance that Putin will win today's Russian elections and rule the country for another six years.