UK Electoral Commission investigating Brexit leaders for hiring Steve Bannon’s company
If you’ve suspected that Donald Trump’s campaign puppet master and all around anarchist Steve Bannon was behind the “Brexit” movement to separate Great Britain from the European Union, strong new evidence says you’re right. Respected British newspaper The Guardian is reporting that the leaders of Brexit, including politician Nigel Farage, are under legal fire for having hired a data analysis company run by Steve Bannon.
The UK Electoral Commission is now investigating Farage and the Brexit organization (officially known as “Leave.EU”) for having failed to disclose that it hired the United States-based firm Cambridge Analytica. The company is largely funded by U.S. billionaire Robert Mercer, who was also deeply involved financially in the Donald Trump campaign. At the time of the Brexit campaign, Steve Bannon was on the Board of Directors of Cambridge Analytica. Two months after the Brexit vote, Bannon stepped away from the company in order to become the CEO of the Trump campaign.
For now, Nigel Farage and the Brexit organization are merely being investigated for campaign finance laws they may have violated by hiring Steve Bannon’s company and failing to disclose it in their filings (source: The Guardian). But where this gets really interesting is that it’s long been widely suspected – though certainly not proven – that Cambridge Analytica was working with the voter data that Russian government hackers stole from voter registration databases.
If that latter part ends up being proven, it will firmly establish that the Russian government was behind the unexpected “Brexit” victory. Of course it would also firmly establish the Russian government being behind Donald Trump’s unexpected victory, as Cambridge Analytica was equally involved in the Trump campaign. Now we wait to see how deep the UK Electoral Commission investigation goes into Brexit and Cambridge Analytica, and whether it produces the smoking gun that the company was indeed working with voter data stolen by the Russians. Contribute to Palmer Report
