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Cambridge Analytica reportedly met with WikiLeaks to discuss 2016 election

A director for the firm reportedly met with Julian Assange last year.

 

Andrew Wyrich

Tech

Posted on Jun 6, 2018   Updated on May 21, 2021, 2:12 pm CDT

A director at Cambridge Analytica, the data firm that has been roiled in controversy since reports suggested that more than 50 million people on Facebook had their data used by the firm without their knowledge, reportedly visited WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and talked about the 2016 presidential election.

Brittany Kaiser, a director at Cambridge Analytica, met with Assange on Feb. 17, 2017 to have a “retrospective” discussion about the election, the Guardian reported on Tuesday.

Cambridge Analytica worked with now-President Donald Trump‘s campaign ahead of the election.

Potential links between Cambridge Analytica and WikiLeaks have been investigated in the past. Last year, the Daily Beast reported that Alexander Nix, the head of the data firm, reached out to WikiLeaks about finding Hillary Clinton‘s missing emails.

Assange confirmed that the data firm reached out to him, but said WikiLeaks rejected their advances.

Kaiser met with Assange in February, according to Ecuadorian embassy visitor logs obtained by the Guardian, and also allegedly gave WikiLeaks money in the form of cryptocurrency.

Both companies are being investigated as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, the newspaper points out. WikiLeaks has drawn scrutiny for sparse connections to the Trump campaign—including trying to get Donald Trump Jr. to leak his father’s tax returns to them.

Roger Stone, a former Trump associate, has also been been questioned about his knowledge of WikiLeaks dumping Democratic National Committee emails online.

You can read all of the Guardian’s report here.

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*First Published: Jun 6, 2018, 10:42 am CDT