Trump campaign analytics company contacted WikiLeaks about Clinton emails

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Trump campaign analytics company contacted WikiLeaks about Clinton emails

By Kara Scannell, Dana Bash and Marshall Cohen, CNN
Updated 5:21 PM ET, Wed October 25, 2017

(CNN)The head of a data analytics company linked to the Trump campaign contacted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in 2016 regarding thousands of Hillary Clinton's emails kept on a private server while she was secretary of state, according to four sources familiar with the outreach.

Alexander Nix, the chief executive of Cambridge Analytica, sent an email to several people including top Donald Trump donor Rebekah Mercer, relaying that he had emailed Assange seeking access to emails from Clinton's private server to turn them into a searchable database for the campaign or a pro-Trump political action committee, two of the sources said.

Cambridge Analytica was hired in the summer of 2016 as part of the Trump campaign's three-pronged data operation, which was led by Brad Parscale and overseen by Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

No one from the Trump campaign was copied on the email, the sources said. Nix sent the email in summer 2016, two sources said, but it is not clear whether he sent it before or after Cambridge Analytica was brought onto the campaign.

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The Daily Beast first reported news of the email outreach. It occurred as Trump increasingly criticized Clinton for deleting thousands of emails from her private server. There is no evidence that the deleted emails were ever hacked or that Wikileaks ever had possession of them.

The attempt at collaboration raises fresh questions about the willingness of people associated with the Trump campaign to work with Wikileaks for political gain.

The site, which publishes leaked documents, released hacked emails in July from the Democratic National Committee and in October from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. US intelligence has said the Podesta emails were stolen by Russia and handed over to WikiLeaks through an intermediary.

News of the email exchange comes amid federal investigations into whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Parscale, the Trump campaign's digital director, was interviewed Tuesday by the House intelligence committee as part of that inquiry.

Assange confirmed the exchange in a post on Twitter Wednesday. "I can confirm an approach by Cambridge Analytica [prior to November last year] and can confirm that it was rejected by WikiLeaks," he tweeted.

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The 33,000 emails deleted from Clinton's private server have never materialized.

Nix and Cambridge Analytica, which is backed by Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, did not respond to requests for comment.

After the Daily Beast report published, the Trump campaign issued a statement by campaign executive director Michael S. Glassner:

"Once President Trump secured the nomination in 2016, one of the most important decisions we made was to partner with the Republican National Committee on data analytics. Leading into the election, the RNC had invested in the most sophisticated data targeting program in modern American in history, which helped secure our victory in the fall. We were proud to have worked with the RNC and its data experts and relied on them as our main source for data analytics. We as a campaign made the choice to rely on the voter data of the Republican National Committee to help elect President Donald J. Trump. Any claims that voter data from any other source played a key role in the victory are false."

The statement does not address contacts between Cambridge Analytica and WikiLeaks.

In Parscale's congressional interview, he denied there was any Russian collusion with the campaign's digital operations, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Many of the committee's questions for Parscale were about the campaign's work with Cambridge Analytica, the sources said. The committee asked the digital firm for documents earlier this month, and Cambridge Analytica said it was cooperating.

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Trump attorney Cohen to meet with Hill investigators this week


Parscale downplayed the campaign's connections to Cambridge Analytica, one of the sources said.

He began working for the Trump Organization's digital team in early 2015 before Trump officially announced his plan to run for office.

Parscale and employees from his firm, Giles-Parscale, incorporated some staffers from Cambridge Analytica into their data operation.

They also worked with teams from data companies that were partnering with the Republican National Committee.

In July 2016, Trump called on Russia to find the emails.

"Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let's see if that happens. That'll be next," Trump said in a news conference.

News of the outreach comes after an earlier disclosure that a Republican operative, Peter W. Smith, had been on the hunt for Clinton's missing emails during the campaign. Smith spoke to The Wall Street Journal in May, saying he and the colleagues he enlisted found five groups of hackers claiming to have 33,000 deleted emails from the private server Clinton used during her tenure as secretary of state.

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Trump says he hasn't been asked to do Mueller interview


He said that he determined two of the groups were Russian. "We knew the people who had these were probably around the Russian government," Smith told the Journal. Smith was found dead of an apparent suicide weeks after the interview.

Steve Bannon, Trump's former White House chief strategist, was vice president and secretary of Cambridge Analytica until he stepped down to run the Trump campaign in August 2016, according to The New York Times. The Mercers are investors in Breitbart News, the far-right site where Bannon served as executive chairman before he ran Trump's campaign.

Political strategist Roger Stone, Trump's long-time confidant, had boasted during the campaign of knowledge about upcoming Wikileaks publication of damaging documents, at one point telling the Boston Herald Radio that he expected "Julian Assange and the Wikileaks people to drop a payload of new documents on a weekly basis fairly soon. And that of course will answer the question of exactly what was erased on that email server."

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Fusion GPS asks court to stop lawmakers from seeing financial records


Stone was questioned privately by the House intelligence committee in September about the identity of his intermediary with Wikileaks.
An attorney for Stone told CNN, "Mr. Stone has complied with the committee's requests. No further statement will be issued."

After the hearing, Stone said he answered the committee's questions other than revealing the identity of his intermediary because that person was a journalist and the conversation was off the record.

"I'm not going to burn somebody I spoke to off the record," Stone said. "If he releases me, if he allows me to release it, I would be happy to give it to the committee. I'm actually going to try to do that."

Stone has previously denied any contact with Assange and any advanced notice of WikiLeaks release of emails belonging to Podesta.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/25/politi...ils/index.html

I have no problem with that. If Wikileaks had them, anyone has the legal right to ask for them. It would be up to Wikileaks to either provide them or not.

The problem (for Stone) is:

"Stone has previously denied any contact with Assange and any advanced notice of WikiLeaks release of emails belonging to Podesta."

Why is that a problem?

He lied during an investigation. That is usually a problem for anyone.

Stone never lied. So, I don't think that's a problem at all. He never had any direct contact with Wikileaks or Assange. He's always told authorities who asked him that he had information about Wikileaks from someone, but refused to give them his name. There were even tweets about it.

Roger Stone Blitz Draws Ire and Praise

Oct 26, 2017

http://www.fordhamobserver.com/wp-co...7.54.49-PM.pngRoger Stone–bottom right. Jacob Linker seated one seat away from him. (COURTESY OF JACOB FLOAM)

By COLIN SHEELEY
News Editor

“I revel in your hatred, because if I weren’t effective, you wouldn’t hate me.” – Roger Stone, quoted by the Fordham University College Republicans in their Facebook announcement post.

It was barely 30 minutes before Roger Stone was scheduled to speak in Rose Hill’s Keating Hall Auditorium on Oct. 10 at the invitation of the College Republicans and there were fewer than ten people in the room. Public Safety did not expect a large crowd for the former Trump campaign adviser (just 57 registered as “Going” on the Facebook event page), but in any case, they were checking backpacks.

One of the only people standing around before the event was Jacob Linker, Fordham College at Rose Hill (FCRH) ‘18, and President of the Fordham Libertarians who originally came to the College Republicans with the idea of inviting Stone. Linker, who doesn’t always associate with the College Republicans, said that his primary motivation for inviting him was the “uneventful and less than active” atmosphere of Fordham’s political scene. He liked that Stone, who has been referred to as a “dirty trickster” by multiple media outlets, is a hatchetman, that his behavior is “a greater deviation from the norm” and that he drives people mad.

“When’s the last time the College Democrats got a speaker that got emotion out of the crowd?” Linker said. In other words, Stone’s tendency for provocation is exactly what Fordham University needs.

As Linker tried to enter the auditorium, a Public Safety officer stopped him to check his bag. He held onto it. “There is alcohol in it,” Linker said. It was a gift for Roger Stone. “What am I supposed to do?” Linker said rhetorically, backing down the hallway.

Stone acknowledges his love for a vodka martini and has attributed some of his most vulgar statements to its influence. When he tweeted in 2012 that former CNN contributor Roland Martin was a “stupid negro” and a “fat negro,” Stone digressed four years later on WBUR’s On Point that it was a “two-martini tweet” and that he regretted his words. Nevertheless, Stone has stood by his claim that his tweets are neither racist nor sexist despite calling former Florida representative Allen West a “know-it-all negro” and CNN commentator Ana Navarro an “Entitled Diva Bitch.”

Inside the auditorium, the few audience members were spread out among the several hundred seats. Caleb Rodrigues, Fordham College at Lincoln Center (FCLC) ‘19 sat in the first row. He too was eager to see Stone speak. According to Rodrigues, he had no idea Stone was coming until he opened an email statement from the University regarding the event. He thought it looked interesting and rode the subway up to Rose Hill.

At 5:01 p.m., two hours before Stone was to speak, Fordham President, Rev. Joseph M. McShane, S.J. had issued an under the wire announcement “allowing the talk to proceed.” McShane asserted that although many of Stone’s views “are demeaning to numerous individuals and groups,” antithetical to “Fordham,” “Jesuit notion,” and “civilized society,” he acknowledges his right to give his opinion. The College Republicans noted in their own statement that they were “pleased with the way in which the president was able to stand up for free speech.”

20 minutes to 7 p.m., students began to stream into the auditorium, carefully taking seats in the middle and right sections of the room. Protesters, many of them students from Lincoln Center, filed similarly into the left rows. Eric Chacon, FCRH ‘18 and a liaison with Fordham College Republicans, watched the groups wander in. He was satisfied with the turnout.

Chacon credited the large attendance to Stone’s political experience. “While most of us disagreed on the character of Stone, we felt that he was a very large historical and political figure,” he said. “I mean how many people do you get to say you heard that were interviewed by a congressional hearing? There’s a lot to be gained from listening to him.” He admitted, however, that at the time he had no idea what Stone was going to say or whether he had communicated that information with any member of the College Republicans’ executive board.

Stone was late in arriving to the event. At 7:25 p.m., he was quickly ushered through the doors of the auditorium, arms outstretched, beckoning cheers and hisses from the crowd, and selected a seat near the front of the stage. After introductions from Paul Cuesta, State Chairman of the New York Federation of College Republicans, the mic was then passed to Sebastian Balasov (FCRH ‘18), President of the College Republicans, who thanked Linker, the Stone team and the Office of Student Involvement for their help in seeing the event through.

The key to understanding Stone, according to Balasov is that “you have to separate Roger Stone the character from Roger Stone.” And anyway, “You can deal with Roger Stone for at least an hour.”

With that, Stone stepped on stage. He wore a loose-fit grey suit and a blue gingham shirt to match his pocket square. A dark tie constricted his adam’s apple. The breasts of his jacket puffed out like a bullfrog as he raised his arms again, reminiscent of but not an exact copy of the Nixon V sign.

“I am happy to be with you today. I am delighted with this turnout. I appreciate the kind words of the University President who hasn’t gotten a chance to get to know me,” Stone said, taunting McShane.

Echoing Balasov, Stone said that McShane simply has him confused with the character he sometimes plays.

For the next 30 minutes, Stone managed to get through most of his talking points without looking terribly disturbed by protesters.

He began with his praise for President Richard Nixon, whose face he notoriously inked above the small of his back. As he listed the achievements of the former President, he was interrupted mid-sentence. “Richard Nixon–” Stone began. “–broke up the Black family!” a protester shouted. A roar erupted out from the left as Stone folded his fingers. “We are the party of Lincoln,” he said. “We are the party of equality and anyone who doesn’t believe that, they’re welcome to leave.”

“Don’t interrupt or you’re going to get ****ing kicked out,” another student said, under his breath.

He transitioned to subjects of non-interventionism, bi-partisan cooperation, racism, marijuana legalization and the opioid crisis, before concluding on what seemed to be the question hanging on everyone’s minds: free speech.

“The old media,” Stone said, “the CNN, the CBS, the ABC, the three networks until 2016, they had a monopoly as it were on political discourse. If they said something didn’t happen, it simply didn’t happen…it is not till the Internet comes into full play, that it’s fully utilized in our politics, that you have the rise of a vibrant, robust, alternative media, which means you no longer have to take what CBS tells you is the only possibility. It’s up to you to surf the web, to find your own information to determine what you believe. I think this is the healthiest possible thing for our democracy which is why some on tech-left want to put the toothpaste back in the tube. ‘Oh we can’t let you be on Facebook. You’re fake news.’ Well who is to say who is, what is fake news?”

“Facts!” several attendees shouted.

“It’s called the First Amendment,” Stone said.

Soon after, the event shifted to a Q&A format. Stone took off his suit jacket as Chacon ferried a microphone between lines of audience members. While several questions covered the more political aspects of Stone’s opinions, such as the Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and the future of the Republican Party, others grew increasingly irritated when some of their questions regarding his inflammatory, personal statements were sidestepped or otherwise completely denied.

“On what moral grounds do you think that any woman, LGBT member or perhaps relative of someone who was a victim of gun violence should be listening to you tonight?” one member asked.
“I think they do want to listen to me,” Stone said pointing at the center-right. “Thank God for the U.S. Constitution and the First Amendment. Is this compulsory for you to be here? You don’t have to be here.”

He spoke broadly about the two opposing camps that had formed in the auditorium as a reflection of a national epidemic. “Polarization already existed,” Stone said. “Politics is already vast and polarized.

We should work constructively with people on the other side, and we’d lose this problem.”

It went on like this for 20 minutes, questions rapidly dissolving into thinly veiled jabs at one group or the other, until some ceased to be questions at all.

“Do you see Fordham as an institution aligned with your values and beliefs?” a woman said. It had to be repeated several times.

“The Foundation for Individual Rights and Education, a nonprofit group that overviews civil liberties on college campuses, has ranked Fordham University as the top ten worst college for free speech, and I want to say that shows how courageous you are to speak here despite opposition,” another said, jerking a finger over back at the protesters.

“I have no complaints,” Stone said in reply, waving a hand. “I’m delighted to be with all of you.”

Applause and condemnation lept as Stone made his final remarks, but soon after, students shuffled out of the auditorium. Eric Chacon was satisfied with the results. “People, they want to understand him more, how the political machine works,” he said. “Regardless of the emotions in the air, now we’re more educated.”

The emotions Chacon spoke of, however, were still hanging around the several pockets of students left in the auditorium. Stone, who had channelled the audience’s anger and approval, had moved upstairs to give an interview with public radio. Students turned their emotions on each other.

An argument broke out near the left section between two men and a woman.“If you don’t want to hear him, don’t come! Kick them out!” one of the men said.

Another about police body cameras: “They already have footage!” one girl said. “I can’t believe these people,” another girl replied turning her back.

The air was stale, and that night it appeared that this was as far as “dialogue” would go. Standing around, Colton Hillman, FCRH ’19, and Vice President of the College Republicans felt the need to reiterate. “People deserved a right to say the things they wanted to say,” he said. “A perfect event.” He’s hoping to feature more speakers like Stone this year.

In a statement to the Observer, the unofficial student coalition, Students for Sex and Gender Equality and Safety (SAGES), said that they were disappointed with the way the event had gone. “Inviting a speaker like Roger Stone can be and has been justified on the grounds of promoting free speech,” the statement read. “However, it seems to SAGES that this justification is a hollow cover for the true reason for his invitation, a thrill those who would invite him seem to get in provoking people they deem merely overly sensitive; people who in reality deal daily with structural oppression which Roger Stone blatantly, actively, and gleefully promotes.”

That being said, SAGES noted that following Oct. 10, “meaningful discussions sprung among students concerned about the presence of hate and bigotry on our campus, and our administration’s sanctioning of such hate.”

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/26/politi...tee/index.html

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Judy

. . . He never had any direct contact with Wikileaks or Assange. . .

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"he bragged about contacts with WikiLeaks and in which suggested he might have had advance knowledge of WikiLeaks’ dumping of hacked emails to hurt the Clinton campaign."
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The WikiLeaks Tweets Roger Stone Can’t Explain

The dirty trickster has lots to say about the Trump-Russia probe—but he’s avoiding key questions.

DAN FRIEDMAN AND DAVID CORN SEP. 26, 2017 6:23 PM

http://www.motherjones.com/wp-conten...-bag.jpg?w=990Roger Stone arrives Tuesday to testify behind closed-doors as part of the House Intelligence Committee's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.J. Scott Applewhite/AP

In one of the more theatrical moments of the Trump-Russia investigation so far, longtime Trump adviser and self-proclaimed dirty trickster Roger Stone appeared on Capitol Hill on Tuesday morning to be questioned by the House intelligence committee. Prior to arriving, carrying a Louis Vuitton tote bag, Stone released a 26-page statement, with 21 pages of exhibits, in which he declared he was innocent of any collusion with Russia or WikiLeaks. And after the session, while parrying with reporters, he bragged about the suit he was wearing and proclaimed he had “answered all of the questions” the lawmakers asked him. But he hadn’t.

Stone put forward a vigorous defense of himself, but ignored perhaps the most damning evidence.Stone was called before the panel to explain tweets and statements he made during the 2016 campaign in which he bragged about contacts with WikiLeaks and in which suggested he might have had advance knowledge of WikiLeaks’ dumping of hacked emails to hurt the Clinton campaign.

Lawmakers also wanted to know about his relationship with a hacker group believed to have worked for Russian intelligence. As he has done previously, Stone declared that the entire investigation into possible collusion between Team Trump and Russia is bunk.

But while putting forward a vigorous defense, he did not address perhaps the most damning evidence that he possibly was in cahoots with WikiLeaks.

Stone has claimed he only communicated with founder Julian Assange via an intermediary when WikiLeaks was mounting its campaign against Hillary Clinton. But after his three-hour, closed-door session with the committee, Stone told reporters he had declined to identify his claimed go-between. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the panel, said Stone would not address a “seminal area of importance to the committee,” and threatened to subpoena Stone, which would require support from committee Republicans. “He refused the central question we had, which was who was he communicating with,” said one committee member who asked not to named.

Last August, Stone said he was in communication with Julian Assange. Now he claims it was through an unnamed intermediary.In making his defense—with a long statement and accompanying timeline he prepared for the committee—Stone grandly waved aside several notorious instances during the 2016 campaign in which he acted in a way that suggested he was in direct contact with WikiLeaks and possessed inside information on its efforts to derail the Clinton campaign.

These moments are often included in timelines of the Trump-Russia scandal to suggest a direct connection between TrumpWorld and Moscow. For instance, on August 8, 2016, Stone, during a speech in Florida, said he was in communication with Julian Assange and that there would be more leaked Clinton documents coming, possibly related to the Clinton Foundation.

Now Stone says he was interacting with Assange through a “mutual acquaintance,” and he downplays his prediction of more leaks to come.

His August 21, 2016, tweet declaring it “will soon the Podesta’s time in the barrel” has drawn much attention. It came six weeks before WikiLeaks released hacked emails from the account of John Podesta, the chief executive of the Clinton campaign. But Stone similarly insists that this tweet was unrelated to any inside information. He asserts he was guessing that Podesta’s business associations—and those of Podesta’s lobbyist brother—would soon be in the public spotlight. The tweet, as he points out, does not reference WikiLeaks or stolen documents.

But there’s a series of later tweets that are far more intriguing, and which Stone ignores in his defense—and neglects to include in the timeline he submitted to the House intelligence committee. At around one in the morning on October 2, Stone tweeted: “Wednesday@HillaryClinton is done. #WikiLeaks.” Two days later, he tweeted: “I have total confidence that @wikileaks and my hero Julian Assange will educate the American people soon #LockHerUp.”
Stone tweeted: “Wednesday @HillaryClinton is done. #WikiLeaks.” That Friday, WikiLeaks began posting the Podesta emails.These tweets certainly suggest that Stone knew something was coming soon from WikiLeaks. In fact, on Thursday, October 6, the hacked emails of Clinton insider Capricia Marshall were posted on the DCLeaks site, and the true bomb hit the following day: WikiLeaks began posting the first group of 60,000 emails stolen from Podesta. These emails would be released by WikiLeaks in small batches almost daily over the next month, creating a drip-drip-drip crisis the Clinton campaign could not shake.
Stone’s tweets—especially the one on October 2—indicate prior knowledge of a major WikiLeaks action against Clinton. Days later, such a move happened. Perhaps this was another coincidence. But it is suspicious that Stone goes through much exertion to explain away his August statement and tweet but ignores the October tweets, including one that specifies, almost to the day, the timing of a WikiLeaks blast against Clinton. So what enabled him so confidently to predict Clinton’s WikiLeaks doom?
Congressional investigators—and special counsel Robert Mueller—would be wise to ignore Stone’s theatrics and self-serving defense and pay close attention to those October tweets. If Stone is excluding them from his account, that’s a good enough reason for scrutiny.

Outside the hearing room, Stone—a longtime conspiracy theorist (he wrote a book saying LBJ killed JFK), and now a regular contributor on Alex Jones’ Infowars site—took a confrontational stance. He boasted that he had matched committee Democrats point by point. He demanded that three committee Democrats—as well as Clinton—apologize to him. But if Democratic committee members are right, Stone’s time in the barrel may not yet be over.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/...ant-explain-1/

"As CNN has previously reported, Republican foes of Trump -- whose identity is still not known -- initially hired Fusion GPS
to conduct opposition research on Trump.

Perkins Coie took over funding for that research on behalf of Clinton and the DNC in April 2016, as it became increasingly clear that Trump would become the Republican presidential nominee. Fusion hired the former British spy who assembled the dossier in the summer of 2016.

It is not clear whether Hill investigators will press to learn the source of the Republican funding of Fusion."

http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/26/politi...ier/index.html

Conservative website funded initial Fusion GPS Trump opposition effort