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The director of controversial data company Cambridge Analytica, who appeared with Arron Banks at the launch of the Leave.EU campaign, was summoned following a US investigation into a possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
A spokeswoman for Brittany Kaiser, former director of business development for Cambridge Analytica – who collapsed after Observer revealed details of her misuse of Facebook's data – confirmed that she had been summoned by special advocate Robert Mueller and that she was cooperating fully with her investigation.
She added that she participated in other judicial and legislative investigations by the US Congress on the activities of the company and voluntarily submitted documents and data.
Kaiser, who testified before the UK Parliament in April that she said Cambridge Analytica had done extensive work for Leave.EU, is the second person related to the company cited to appear before the special council. The Electoral Commission said its investigation on Leave.EU had revealed no evidence that the campaign "would have received donations or paid for services provided by Cambridge Analytica … beyond the initial scoping work".
Damian Collins, Parliament's chairman charged with investigating the false information, said it was "not surprising" that Mueller is monitoring Kaiser because "his work has connected him to WikiLeaks, Cambridge Analytica and [its parent company] SCL, the Trump Campaign, Leave.EU and Arron Banks ".
He said it was now vital that Britain conduct its own investigation into foreign interference: "We should not leave that to the Americans."
Tom Watson, the deputy leader of the Labor Party, echoed Collins' statement, stating, "This is the first evidence that an important player in the Leave.EU campaign is interested in the Mueller Global Survey. People will be surprised that the British government has no interest in establishing the facts of what happened. "
Special advocate Robert Mueller. Photography: Joshua Roberts / Reuters
In August, Sam Patten, an American political consultant who had worked for Cambridge Analytica during campaigns in the United States and abroad, had entered into an advocacy agreement with Mueller after recognizing that he was not allowed to do so. had not been registered as a foreign agent for a Ukrainian oligarch.
He became the subject of the special council's investigation because of the work done with Paul Manafort, head of the Trump campaign in Ukraine. He had also set up a business with Konstantin Kilimnik, a key figure who, according to Mueller, has connections with Russian intelligence services and faces charges of obstructing justice. In a statement of 2017 to the Washington PostKilimnik denied any connection with the intelligence services. Kaiser, however, is the first person directly connected to the Brexit and Trump campaigns, who were interviewed by Mueller.
The news was revealed in a new Netflix documentary, The big hack, which was featured at the Sundance Film Festival last month and is expected to come out later this spring. The filmmakers followed Kaiser for months after arriving at the guardian, including a few moments after she received the subpoena. She states that the summons came after the guardian revealed that she had visited the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, while she was still employed by Cambridge Analytica in February 2017, three months after the US elections.
Mueller's investigation focused on whether the Trump campaign was intended to influence WikiLeaks' timing of publishing e-mails before the elections. Investigators study the communications between them. In the film, Kaiser says that she pbaded from a cooperating witness to an investigative subject because of her contact with Assange.
In October 2017, it was revealed that Alexander Nix, the managing director of Cambridge Analytica, had contacted Assange in August 2016 to try to get emails from Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign – whose indictments emanating from the Mueller team would have been obtained by Russian military intelligence – to use in Donald Trump's campaign. When Kaiser testified in Parliament last year, she was asked about her relationship with Assange and WikiLeaks, but did not reveal that she had met Assange.
In the documentary, Kaiser is shown after receiving an email from guardian Last June, we asked if we would meet Assange and alleged cryptocurrency donations to WikiLeaks. Kaiser did not respond to the email at that time, but on camera he says, "She knows that I met Assange. And she knows that I gave money to WikiLeaks in the form of bitcoin. "
Her legal representatives then wrote to the newspaper that the allegations, including the fact that she had "channeled" donations to WikiLeaks, were false. Kaiser said that she had received a small bitcoin gift in 2011 – well before working at Cambridge Analytica – and, not knowing what to do with it, she had given it to WikiLeaks because she had benefited from the material that he had published over the years.
His lawyer told the Observer that the meeting with Assange took place after a chance meeting in London with an acquaintance who knew him. It lasted 20 minutes and consisted mainly of Assange who told him "how he saw the world". He said that they had not discussed the US elections.
Patten and Kaiser participated in a controversial election campaign in Nigeria in January 2015, which according to former Cambridge Analytica employees presented a "troubling" parallel with the US presidential election.
the guardian revealed that the data firm had worked alongside a team of unidentified Israeli intelligence agents during the campaign. Former Cambridge Analytica employees described how the Israelis hacked the emails of the Nigerian president, who is now president, and released prejudicial news reports to him a few weeks before the elections.
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