Trump-Russia scandal: authorities are preparing to raid Cambridge Analytica offices
To borrow a phrase from Donald Trump’s longtime confidant Roger Stone, it’s officially Cambridge Analytica’s time in the barrel. We knew the Trump campaign data firm was headed for major trouble on Friday night when Facebook rushed a press release out the door announcing that it was banning the company due to abuse of user data. In the days since, one major media report after another has exposed the company’s secret methods. Now authorities are preparing to raid the company’s offices.
Although the New York Times was the first to publish a Cambridge Analytica bombshell this weekend, it was British television outlet Channel 4 News that hit the true pay dirt today with footage of Cambridge Analytica executives admitting to using tactics ranging from bribery to sex workers to gain an edge in elections. According to a Reuters report (link) has led authorities in Britain to prepare a search warrant for a raid on Cambridge Analytica’s offices as soon as tomorrow. So how does this impact the Trump-Russia investigation?
It seems nearly a given that British authorities, who are already investigating Cambridge Analytica for the shady role it played in the Brexit vote, will turn over whatever evidence they find to Special Counsel Robert Mueller. In addition, even as the British are raiding Cambridge Analytica’s UK offices, these new bombshell reports may give Mueller the legal grounds to raid the company’s headquarters in the United States.
It’s long been widely suspected, though never substantiated, that Cambridge Analytica was working with U.S. voter registration data stolen by Russian hackers as part of its work for the Trump campaign. If these new bombshells uncover evidence or witnesses who can corroborate these suspicions, it would prove once and for all that Donald Trump and Russia criminally conspired to alter the outcome of the election.
