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For Over the last two years, observers have speculated that the June 2016 Brexit UK campaign served as a petri dish for Donald Trump's presidential campaign in the United States. Now, there is new evidence that this has been done. Recently revealed e-mails show that Trump's former advisor, Steve Bannon, and Cambridge Analytica, the Big Data company he was working on at the time, were simultaneously bustling the two nationalist political movements in 2015.
Emma Briant, an academic disinformation expert at George Washington University, has uncovered new emails that seem to reveal Bannon's early documented role in Brexit. The e-mails, which date back to October 2015, show that Bannon, who was then vice president of Cambridge Analytica, a US company largely owned by US billionaire hedge fund financier Robert Mercer, was aware of the ongoing discussions. place between his company and the leaders of Leave.EU, a nationalist organization of the far right. The following month, Leave.EU publicly launched a campaign to convince British voters to support a referendum in favor of the exit of the European Union. The United Kingdom voted shortly for the so-called Brexit in June 2016. The tumultuous fallout has rocked the UK ever since, threatening the government of Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May.
Bannon did not respond to requests for comments. But her name and private e-mail address appeared on the three-e-mail channel in October 2015, between Brittany Kaiser, director of program development at Cambridge Analytica, and Arron Banks, who led the Leave.EU campaign and spoke about himself. in the title of his memoir, one of the "Bad Boys of Brexit". Banks can not be contacted to comment on e-mails, first published on Saturday by the British site openDemocracy.
The precise role played by foreign entities in promoting and eventually financing Brexit has been clouded by mystery and controversy. British law prohibits foreign contributions to its political campaigns – just as US law prohibits foreign campaign contributions. The laws are designed to prevent the international manipulation of domestic affairs. The leaders of Cambridge Analytica, who declared bankruptcy this spring, flatly denied that the firm was paid to do work as part of the Leave.EU campaign. The new e-mails do not contradict this, but show that even if the company was not paid for its services, it laid the groundwork for the first Leave.EU campaign. Emails show that Banks and other members of Leave.EU management met with Cambridge Analytica leaders in 2015 and discussed what Banks called a "two-step process" that would "get the CA" , Cambridge Analytica, within the team. "
In an email dated October 24, 2015, Banks also raised the requirement to give Cambridge Analytica help to raise funds through the United States for the Leave.EU campaign. In a note to the Cambridge Analytica leaders with whom he spoke, Banks wrote, "It is clear that the main donors are sitting on the fence, but we want to do something about it." Banks returns to the subject later in the note, adding: "We want CA to develop a fundraising strategy in the States and to involve companies and specific interest groups likely to be affected by the TTIP" – the future transatlantic partnership. trade and investment.
Banks have not looked into the potential illegality of direct donations from abroad, but have suggested a strategy that could circumvent the letter of campaign finance laws, if it is not their intention. Banks have suggested using Cambridge Analytica to make contact with Americans "with family ties to the UK". Clearly, targeting Americans with British parents was hoped to avoid violations of the campaign finance law. He suggested that Cambridge Analytica, which claimed to have access to two hundred and thirty million US voter registration data, as well as other personal information, could be solicited "to raise funds and create MS [social media] activity."
The next day, a Cambridge Analytica staff member sent an email back to Banks, again mentioning Bannon in the chain, suggesting that the company was considering developing a proposal that would include "state-based fundraising strategies." -United".
The question of whether foreign funds have secretly supported the Brexit movement has become the subject of intense speculation and investigation in the United Kingdom. British investigations are, in many ways, parallel to Robert Mueller's investigation into possible Russian support for Trump's 2016 campaign. Banks particularly attracted attention because his company spent about £ 9 million to support the Brexit campaign, making it by far the country's largest donor in its political campaign, despite doubts about that he has the personal wealth to contribute so much by himself. Banks insisted that his contributions were legal and that foreign sources, including Russia, provided no funding. But several British agencies have opened investigations, including a criminal investigation into Banks' role with the National Crime Agency, the British equivalent of the F.B.I.
Brittany Kaiser, former CEO of Cambridge Analytica, whose name appears on the new emails, has since become a kind of whistleblower, revealing the role of the company in the Brexit campaign to the press. Reached by a spokeswoman, she declined to comment.
Although the email chain includes Bannon, there is no indication that he has read or commented on the exchange between Leave.EU executives and Cambridge Analytica executives. In the fall of 2015, Bannon was busy opening a new office for Cambridge Analytica in Alexandria, Virginia, just across the Potomac River that Washington, DC, and serving Republican candidates. including Donald Trump. The company first worked for Ted Cruz's presidential campaign. But when Trump won the Republican nomination, the Mercer family, who had financially supported Trump's presidential candidacy, insisted that Trump entrust Bannon with the campaign and bring in Cambridge Analytica, in which the family was also heavily invested.
Cambridge Analytica executives said they have access to unprecedented amounts of advanced "psychographic" data that has helped the Trump campaign target its pitch. However, last May, the company declared bankruptcy following allegations – denied by the leaders of Cambridge Analytica – that it improperly obtained personal data from millions of Facebook people, without the users' permission, in violation rules of society.
The possibility that Brexit and the Trump campaign simultaneously support the same social media company and its transgressive tactics, as well as some of the same advisers, to carry out far-right nationalist campaigns, has sounded the alarm on both sides of the Atlantic. Damian Collins, Member of Parliament and Chairman of its Committee on Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, which investigated misinformation, told the Observer, who made one of the latest news from Cambridge Analytica in the UK, that the new emails "suggest that the role of Bannon and Mercer is much deeper and more complex than we had imagined. The big question is whether Mercer's money was used in the Brexit campaign, which clearly shows why Britain needs a proper investigation in the Mueller way. There are direct links between the political movements at the origin of Brexit and Trump. We must recognize the largest image here. This initiative is coordinated by very wealthy people in a way we have never seen before. "
US investigations of foreign interference in Trump's election and British Brexit investigations are becoming increasingly intertwined. The role of Russia's ambassador to the United Kingdom, Alexander Yakovenko, would have been of interest to Mueller's investigators as well as to those in the UK who examined his relationship with Banks. The role of Nigel Farage, former leader of the far-right party Euroskeptic UK Independence Party, Bannon and Trump's ally, would also have aroused the interest of investigators from both countries, especially after his departure for 2017. 39, Ecuadorian Embassy in London, in which Julian Assange took refuge. Assange's media platform, WikiLeaks, has published numerous emails stolen by Russia during the Hillary Clinton campaign during the 2016 election season.
Mueller's investigation is under investigation, but the absence of a single, comprehensive survey in the United Kingdom has led critics to ask for one. Emma Briant, for example, who submitted the new emails to the UK government for further investigation, told openDemocracy that "this evidence shows that Banks was looking for foreign funding for Brexit from the start". She claimed that the British investigation, like the United States, had to keep up with money and manipulate public opinion as nationalist policies proliferated. two sides of the Atlantic.
