Trump big data firm Cambridge Analytic working in Kenya

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Trump big data firm Cambridge Analytic working in Kenya

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Sep 01, 2017 5:59 pm

Kenya's Supreme Court rules President Uhuru Kenyatta's win in the August Presidential election is "invalid, null and void".


After Trump, "big data" firm Cambridge Analytica is now working in Kenya
By Sam Bright
BBC Trending
3 August 2017

Donald Trump posing with African leaders in ItalyImage copyrightGETTY IMAGES
Image caption
Kenya's president, Uhuru Kenyatta (pictured, far left), met Donald Trump at a recent G7 summit in Italy
A firm that worked for Donald Trump and which once claimed ties to a pro-Brexit campaign group is now reportedly working for Kenya's incumbent president.
Cambridge Analytica's mission statement is simple. On its website, the firm says it "uses data to change audience behaviour." Most notably, the company was hired by Donald Trump's presidential campaign and has been given some credit for Trump's electoral success.
The company purchases and compiles demographic data on voters. On its website, Cambridge Analytica claims to possess up to 5,000 data points on more than 230 million Americans. When combined with on-the-ground surveys, Cambridge Analytica can use this vast information bank to target key messages to relevant voters.
Now, Cambridge Analytica is working in Kenya, helping in the effort to re-elect President Uhuru Kenyatta.
On 10 May, The Star newspaper in Kenya reported that Kenyatta's Jubilee Party had hired the firm, and a month later, the same newspaper reported that Cambridge Analytica was working from the seventh floor of the party's headquarters in Nairobi.
Cambridge Analytica refused to comment on those reports to BBC Trending, but the global privacy-protection charity Privacy International suggests that the company is being paid $6 million for its work in the country.
Eight things about the Kenyan elections
Kenya election: Fake CNN and BBC news reports circulate
Kenyan victim of 2007 post-election violence speaks to BBC
BBC Trending on Facebook
Cambridge Analytica's involvement in Kenyan politics began in 2013, when the company worked for Kenyatta and The National Alliance - the forerunner of the Jubilee Party. During that year's campaign, the company correlated online data with 47,000 on-the-ground surveys. According to the Cambridge Analytica website, this allowed the company to create a profile of the Kenyan electorate and come up with a campaign strategy "based on the electorate's needs (jobs) and fears (tribal violence)." Kenyatta won the 2013 election.
Kenyans are among the most active social media users in Africa. The number of mobile phone users in the country shot up from 8 million in 2007 to 30 million in 2013, and 88% of the population can now access the internet through their phones.
Having served as Minister of Information and Communication from 2005 to 2013, Bitange Ndemo was one of the driving forces behind Kenya's technological expansion. He told BBC Trending that social media plays a "key role" in the country's political campaigns.
"It provides a fast way of responding to your opponent's propaganda," he said. "Plus, it is perhaps the only medium that can reach most young people."
Ethnic turmoil
At the same time, Kenya's recent political history has been marred by violence. This reached a peak after the 2007 general election, when a contested result caused ethnic divisions to erupt - 1,100 people were killed in the ensuing conflict, while 650,000 were displaced.
"Kenya is very tricky political terrain," says Paul Goldsmith, an American researcher and writer who's lived in Kenya for 40 years. "Cambridge Analytica might have access to surveys and other data, but that doesn't necessarily translate into useful insights. There's always something unpredictable during elections here. There's always a curveball."
"Western companies, charities and development experts tend to run into obstacles when they come to Africa," Goldsmith says. "I would be surprised if Cambridge Analytica was any different."
Ethnic divisions continue to frame Kenyan politics. Each political party remains closely affiliated with a particular ethnic group. Though Kenyatta did not stand for president in 2007, he was accused of encouraging members of his native Kikuyu ethnic group to attack members of the Luo ethnic group, who were represented in the election by Raila Odinga. The charge was taken to the International Criminal Court, but ultimately dismissed in December 2014 due to a lack of evidence. Odinga, who maintains that he was cheated out of victory in 2007, is standing against Kenyatta this time around.
Image of Raila OdingaImage copyrightGETTY IMAGES
Image caption
Raila Odinga has run for president on three previous occasions
During primary elections earlier this year, held to decide the candidates for each party, seven people were killed as rival groups accused each other of vote rigging. And, earlier this week, it was reported that a senior election official had been tortured to death.
A spokesperson for Cambridge Analytica told Trending that the company is not involved in any negative advertising in Kenya, and that the company "has never advocated the exploitation of ethnic divisions in any country."
Data harvesting
Cambridge Analytica's presence in Kenya has prompted concerns about data protection. "Kenya does not currently have specific data protection legislation," says Claire Lauterbach, a researcher at Privacy International. "This basically means that it's unclear which agencies or companies can have access to individuals' data, including sensitive information."
Cambridge Analytica's strategy involves the mass harvesting and analysis of voter data. Data protection campaigners are therefore concerned about what might happen to this data after the election.
The issue even worries former government ministers, including Bitange Ndemo, who says the government has failed to pass the data protection laws that he drafted when in office. "Somehow Parliament did not quite understand its importance," he told Trending. "We need to protect personal data. The fears that data may be abused should be a concern to all."
In response, Cambridge Analytica said that the company is not compiling individualised data profiles on Kenyan voters, and a spokesperson also stated that a data harvesting programme on the same scale as recent American campaigns is not possible in Kenya.
Painting of Trump by Kenyan artistImage copyrightSIMON MAINA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Image caption
Cambridge Analytica claims that it helped Trump to win crucial swing states
Cambridge Analytica is heavily funded by Robert Mercer, a US businessman who helped to fund Donald Trump's presidential campaign and was a member of Trump's transition team. Mercer is also a major donor to Breitbart News, the website that current White House chief strategist Steve Bannon ran before joining the Trump campaign, and Bannon was once on Cambridge Analytica's board of directors.
The UK's privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), is currently investigating the use of data analytics in the EU referendum campaign and has stated that it has concerns about Cambridge Analytica's use of personal data.
BBC Newsnight: Did Cambridge Analytica play a role in the EU referendum?
Breitbart: The web that connects Trump and Farage
Following the Brexit vote, it was widely reported that Cambridge Analytica had assisted the unofficial Leave.EU campaign - affiliated with former UKIP leader Nigel Farage and insurance tycoon Aaron Banks. But this is a matter of dispute. Leave.EU's former communications director, Andy Wigmore, told the Observer in February that Cambridge Analytica was "more than happy to help… we shared a lot of information."
Banks, one of the founders of Leave.EU, has made contradictory statements about Cambridge Analytica's role in the campaign on Twitter. At one point, in response to a story about the firm, Banks seemed to credit the company's technology with advancing the Brexit cause:
Skip Twitter post by @Arron_banks

Report
End of Twitter post by @Arron_banks
However, he later said that Leave.EU did not enlist the company, because the Electoral Commission (EC) designated a different group as the official Leave campaign:
Skip Twitter post 2 by @Arron_banks

Report
End of Twitter post 2 by @Arron_banks
Cambridge Analytica denies that it was ever involved in the EU referendum campaign, and has lodged a legal complaint against the Observer.
Kenya is not the only developing country election where Cambridge Analytica is now getting involved. Bloomberg News reported that the company is also conducting initial research in Mexico, in advance of that country's presidential election in 2018.

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-40792078





Kenya's Supreme Court rules President Uhuru Kenyatta's win in the August Presidential election is "invalid, null and void".

Kenya's Supreme Court declares presidential election result null, orders do-over
Tonny Onyulo, Special for USA TODAY Published 5:39 a.m. ET Sept. 1, 2017 | Updated 11:45 a.m. ET Sept. 1, 2017
Video provided by Reuters Newslook

AFP AFP_S09T3 I JUS KEN
(Photo: SIMON MAINA, AFP/Getty Images)

NAIROBI — Kenya’s Supreme Court on Friday overturned last month's presidential election, citing voting irregularities, and ordered a new election within 60 days. It declared President Uhuru Kenyatta’s re-election null and void.

It is the first time a presidential election in East Africa's economic hub has been nullified. Supporters of opposition candidate Raila Odinga, 72, danced and cheered in the streets, and said they felt vindicated because he had contended that he lost because the electronic tally had been hacked.

"We are happy as Kenyans because justice has finally been found," said Chris Omondi, a supporter of Odinga outside the court. "Raila has to win this election."

The country’s top court ruled 4-2 in favor of a petition by Odinga, whose lawyer said a scrutiny of the forms used to tally the results had anomalies affecting nearly 5 million votes. Kenyatta won by about 1.5 million votes out of 20 million cast.

“After considering the evidence, we are satisfied that the elections were not conducted in the accordance to the dictates of the constitution,” said Chief Justice David Maraga, who delivered the ruling.


Chris Msando, the head of the electoral commissions' IT programs, was tortured and murdered shortly before the election, something the opposition said proved a conspiracy against Odinga.

Violence broke out, killing 24 people, after Kenyatta won a second term in the Aug. 8 election with 54% of the vote. However it was not the feared mass killings of a decade ago when more than 1,000 people died in violence following Odinga's loss in 2007 elections.

The Supreme Court said the election commission “committed illegalities and irregularities … in the transmission of results, substance of which will be given in the detailed judgment of the court” that will be published within 21 days.

“It’s a very historic day for the people of Kenya and by extension the people of Africa,” said Odinga, the leader of the National Super Alliance (Nasa) party.

“For the first time in the history of African democratization, a ruling has been made by a court nullifying irregular election of a president. This is a precedent-setting ruling,” he added.

Analysts echoed Odinga, saying that Kenya was setting a standard for the entire continent, where courts regularly side with the ruling parties and incumbents, often in power for decades by fraud in elections or outright repression of the opposition.

The decision has "refreshed Kenyans trust in the judiciary, given the long evasive democracy an opportunity to take root in our deeply divided nation and set the agenda for democracy and the free will of the people," said Nazlin Umar Rajput, a political analyst in Kenya, and chairwoman of the National Muslim Council of Kenya.

"This is a win-win for the entire African continent whichever side of the divide anyone may be on," she said. "Whether we like it or not, we go down in history."

Kenyatta said he personally disagreed with the ruling, but accepted it. " I urge you to maintain peace and love each other. We believe in democracy and we are ready for the second round. We believe in the peace and unity of our country," Kenyatta said after the Supreme Court ruling.

The court did not place any blame on Kenyatta or his Jubilee party, which has denied any vote tampering. The country's electoral commission said there was a failed hacking attempt, while international election observers said they saw no interference with the vote.

“I’m very happy today, I can now go back home and have peace,” said Victor Wesonga, a resident of Nairobi's sprawling Kibera slum, where Odinga enjoys huge support. “I knew Raila won this election but he was denied the victory."

“We are very bitter with the decision of the Supreme Court," said Janet Wamboi, a Kenyatta supporter.

“But we’ll still vote for Uhuru Kenyatta in large numbers. We have the advantage in both houses (of parliament) and we are sure of winning the elections,” she added.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/wor ... 624115001/


Fake news is already disrupting Kenya’s high-stakes election campaign
A Kenyan looks at a newspaper a day after the country's presidential election, at a roadside stall in Nairobi, Kenya Tuesday, March 5, 2013. Kenya's presidential election drew millions of eager voters who endured long lines to cast ballots Monday, but the vote was marred by violence that left 19 people dead, including four policemen hacked to death by machete-wielding separatists.
Be careful what you read. (AP Photo/Sayyid Azim)
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Abdi Latif Dahir
OBSESSION

Propaganda
June 25, 2017 Quartz Africa
Nairobi
On the morning of Apr.13, at the height of Kenya’s primary elections, residents of Busia County in western Kenya woke up to a dose of fake news. The constituents were due to vote in the Orange Democratic Movement party’s gubernatorial race, which pitted lawmaker Paul Otuoma against the county’s governor Sospeter Ojaamong. As voters streamed to the poll, they found leaflets saying Otuoma had defected to the ruling Jubilee Party.
In a region dominated by the opposition ODM party, the circulating pamphlets undermined Otuoma’s candidacy. Even more disquieting was that the leaflets resembled the front page of the Daily Nation, the country’s largest newspaper and paper of record. Speaking to the press, Otuoma said these were “ancient methods” of rigging and that he was confident he was going to win the race. He nevertheless lost the race, claimed the results were flawed and left the party to run for governor as an independent candidate.
The incident in Busia marked a tipping point in the dissemination of fake stories in the run-up to Kenya’s general elections in August. It also illustrated the manufacturing of falsehoods disguised as news material—not the least on a traditional and trusted medium like a newspaper. The false narratives are also augmented by the endless stream of misinformation, propaganda, and made-up stories currently being shared on social media—a trend that is now worrying both analysts and mainstream media outlets.

Otuoma was right to claim that this type of disinformation was “ancient.” Since the earliest days of printing, fake stories were used as a commercial strategy to sell pamphlets, books, and newspapers. But the internet has edged all that out, fueling sensationalist and bogus stories that get shared far and wide.
Across Africa, false stories have been peddled about the spread of Ebola to the death of showbiz celebrities. And the problem was, however, more visible during the 2016 US presidential elections when Macedonian teens were writing and sharing stories about Donald Trump or and Hillary Clinton.

“Some may know it is fake, or false, or incorrect, but they still pass it on because they think it is funny.”

In Kenya, attempts at propaganda and misinformation are becoming more discernable as the election season gets underway. The stakes are also elevated by the ubiquity of connectivity among the electorate: mobile penetration among Kenya’s 44 million people is up to 87%, and the country has one of the fastest mobile internet speeds in the world. Kenya also boasts some of the most youthful voters in the east Africa region, who tweet a lot, and are increasingly dependent on online news for information. And in a nation where politics is often considered the ‘national sport,’ and where ethnicity defines the electoral agenda more than issues, observers say misinformation can be used to play at inherent beliefs and biases.
Nanjira Sambuli, the digital equality advocacy manager at the Web Foundation says the electorate and the media should be cognizant of these trends. “We have to proceed carefully,” Sambuli says, “and not operate on sheer alarmism, but carefully assess what’s put forth from various quarters.”

The information propaganda is being spread on Twitter as hashtags, paid search on Google as well as sponsored posts and ads on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram timelines. For instance, in late May, the hashtag #DavidNdiiExposed started trending in Kenya, supposedly aimed as a takedown of the prominent economist David Ndii, who is often critical of the government’s economic and development policies. The attack didn’t do well among Kenyans but was a harbinger of the campaign of misinformation lurking in social media.
Local Kenyan political operatives have also been registering fake news websites like something called Foreign Policy Journal (fp-news.com) or CNN Channel 1 (cnnchannel1.com)to propagate false stories during the election. The sites have corresponding names or brand colors matching international media outlets, all in an effort to give their stories added credibility. For instance, the FP News site generates stories supposedly written by someone called Thomas Greenfield whose bio claims to have written for Quartz (he has not). It’s worth noting Thomas Greenfield is the surname of former US assistant secretary of state for Africa, Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
The FP News was exposed on Twitter earlier this year as being administered by one Francis Njuguna. FP News carries stories like how Western think tanks believe president Uhuru Kenyatta will win a majority of the vote, even when polls show that the race is tight. Another article reported on how the opposition leader Raila Odinga was orchestrating the recent attacks on white-owned ranches and conservations in Kenya. In fact, a majority of the articles on the site are against Odinga, drawing either false conclusions about his past, distorting or selectively omitting facts, or providing no context.


Alphonce Shiundu, the Kenya editor for Africa Check says not everyone is discerning to know a fake for what it is. “Fighting propaganda online requires elements of media literacy,” Shiundu says. “Some may know it is fake, or false, or incorrect, but they still pass it on because they think it is funny.” The onus to verify information and to expose the purveyors of half-truths, Shiundu says, squarely falls on journalists.
But in a high-stakes election like this one, the explosion of false stories upends the role of mainstream media, considered the most trusted institution in the country. This presents a challenge to the journalism fraternity, different from the 2007 elections, when local language radio stations took part in inciting the violence that led to the death of more than 1,000 people.
Sponsored ad on Instagram targeting presidential candidate Raila Odinga
Sponsored ad on Instagram targeting presidential candidate Raila Odinga (Quartz)
“Dark social”

Sambuli says that Kenyans on Twitter—better known as KOT—are cynical, and are quick, like in the case of the hashtag against Ndii, to question false narratives. But she says she’s worried about the “dark social” apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger or emails where information shared cannot be measured or questioned publicly.
A lot of the information propaganda in Kenya, she noted, was also “driven by local actors, even though it’s alleged that some quarters are hiring foreign companies versed in micro-profiling to lead the charge.”
In 2013, Kenya’s government hired the UK-based public relations firm BTP Advisers to “develop a compelling political narrative” even though president Kenyatta had just been indicted at the International Criminal Court. Local media reports also claim the president has hired Cambridge Analytica, a company at the center of a growing controversy over the use of personal data to influence both the Brexit vote in the UK and the Donald Trump election in the US. Cambridge acknowledges that it worked for a “leading Kenyan political party” in 2013 to conduct and implement the largest political research project in East Africa—but denies it is working on Kenyatta’s campaign now.
Interest in fake news searches in Kenya
Interest in fake news searches in Kenya (Google Trends)
Sambuli says that sharing timely and factual information with audiences helps forestall misinformation from running amok. The media was still a primary source of information for many Kenyans, and she said they shouldn’t squander the opportunity to step in during these critical times. “Asking how, why and other probings go a long way in assessing accuracy and credibility of information, which is everywhere these days.”
https://qz.com/1011989/fake-news-and-mi ... -election/







seemslikeadream » Sun Jun 18, 2017 7:30 am wrote:if it wasn't for Mercer no one would even be talking about Russia right now


Mercer/Cambridge Analytica/Brad Parscale got trump elected...

Mercer would do ANYTHING including colluding with Russia to get the Russian mob infested trump elected...


Why Mercer bought election: "IRS demandng $7 billion..back taxes frm world’s most profitable hedge fund"

POLITICS & GOVERNMENT
MAY 01, 2017 6:00 AM
Billionaire Robert Mercer did Trump a huge favor. Will he get a payback?
BY SCOTT CHRISTIANSON AND GREG GORDON
McClatchy Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON
The Internal Revenue Service is demanding a whopping $7 billion or more in back taxes from the world’s most profitable hedge fund, whose boss’s wealth and cyber savvy helped Donald Trump pole-vault into the White House.

Suddenly, the government’s seven-year pursuit of Renaissance Technologies LLC is blanketed in political intrigue, now that the hedge fund’s reclusive, anti-establishment co-chief executive, Robert Mercer, has morphed into a political force who might be owed a big presidential favor.

With Trump in the Oval Office, Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, who has become his public voice, seem armed with political firepower every which way you look – and that’s even though presidential adviser Stephen Bannon, their former senior executive and political strategist, appears to have recently lost influence.

Since the IRS found in 2010 that a complicated banking method used by Renaissance and about 10 other hedge funds was a tax-avoidance scheme, Mercer has gotten increasingly active in politics. According to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, he doled out more than $22 million to outside conservative groups seeking to influence last year’s elections, while advocating the abolition of the IRS and much of the federal government.

The Mercer Family Foundation, run by Rebekah Mercer, also has donated millions of dollars to conservative nonprofit groups that have called for the firing of IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, an Obama administration holdover whose five-year term expires in November.


Trump's Biggest Donors Are At Odds With Administration Team
Inform


One of them, the Heritage Foundation, received $1.5 million from the Mercer foundation from 2013 through 2015, according to its most recent public tax filings.

BOB HAS ALWAYS BEEN VERY GOOD AT LEVERAGING HIS MONEY. . . . BOB’S BEEN VERY DISSATISFIED WITH U.S. POLITICS FOR MANY YEARS. . . . I REMEMBER HIM BEING VERY OUTSPOKEN ABOUT HILLARY CLINTON.
Renaissance co-founder Nick Patterson, who recruited Mercer to the hedge fund in 1993

IRS leader Koskinen has said publicly that he intends to finish his term. On his watch, the agency hasn’t been cowed by the Mercers.

The IRS recently released a little-noticed advisory stating that its top targets in future business audits will include so-called “basket options,” the instruments that Renaissance and some other hedge funds have used to convert short-term capital gains to long-term profits that have lower tax rates.

But Renaissance, with assets estimated at $97 billion on Dec. 31, 2016, has shown no signs of buckling to the IRS’s demands.

Nor has there been a hint as to whether Trump, a real estate developer who has refused to make his tax returns public, will intercede. The White House declined to respond to questions about the matter.

Richard Painter, chief White House ethics adviser under President George W. Bush, said the optics surrounding the Mercers’ political connections and the IRS case “are terrible.”

“The guy’s got a big case in front of the IRS,” said Painter, now a University of Minnesota law professor who is also vice chairman of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “He’s trying to put someone in there who’s going to drop the case. Is the president of the United States going to succumb to that or is he not?”

“Are we going to have a commissioner of the IRS who aggressively enforces the law and takes good cases to Tax Court or (somebody who) just throws away tax cases so billionaires don’t have to pay their taxes and the rest of us can pay more taxes?”

The case against Renaissance was initiated before Koskinen became commissioner.

It’s illegal for the IRS to discuss ongoing tax cases, and the agency declines to comment about Renaissance. But in 2014, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations issued a blistering report detailing Renaissance’s use of so-called “basket options” trades by its employees-only Medallion Fund to slash taxes on $34 billion in profits. The panel estimated that Renaissance’s back tax bill dating to the earliest IRS audit would be at least $6.8 billion.

Jonathan Gasthalter, a spokesman for the Mercers, declined to comment on the case.

He pointed McClatchy to a Renaissance statement issued in 2014 in response to the Senate findings. Renaissance said then that its tax calculations were “appropriate under current law” and that it had “cooperated fully” with the IRS inquiry.

Robert Martin, a lawyer in the IRS’s chief counsel’s office who co-authored the agency’s legal notices on the issue in 2010 and 2014, said the law covering reporting of the options profits had held up for more than 75 years.

Trump has the legal authority to replace Koskinen and the IRS’s chief counsel, the other agency position requiring Senate confirmation. The latter post is occupied by an acting chief counsel.

John Coffee, a law professor at Columbia University who monitors the behavior of Wall Street firms, said the Mercers might win Koskinen’s ouster, but he doubts they could undermine the case.

“I don’t know they’re going to get their candidate in,” he said, “and I’m not sure many candidates are going to try to reverse the staff on something that’s already deeply advanced in either litigation or negotiation.”

Dennis Ventry, an expert in tax law policy from the University of California at Davis School of Law, said he was unaware of any instance in which a president had intervened to stop a tax audit or prosecution. So far, he said, Trump “has been remarkably restrained regarding the IRS.”

THE GUY’S GOT A BIG CASE IN FRONT OF THE IRS. HE’S TRYING TO PUT SOMEONE IN THERE WHO’S GOING TO DROP THE CASE. IS THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES GOING TO SUCCUMB TO THAT OR IS HE NOT?
Richard Painter, chief White House ethics adviser under President George W. Bush

A former IBM computer scientist, Mercer has forged a web of relationships reaching high into the new administration.

At the top is Bannon, a former senior executive of Cambridge Analytica, a data analysis firm in which Mercer owns the largest stake. The firm, a U.S. subsidiary of a British company, is credited with playing a key role in Trump’s victory by providing his campaign with electronic dossiers shedding light on the views of 220 million Americans.

Mercer funded Bannon to produce hard-edged political films and a book attacking Hillary Clinton, Trump’s opponent in the presidential race. Mercer also invested millions of dollars to become majority owner of far-right Breitbart News with Bannon at the helm. The Mercers and Bannon helped to fuel conservatives’ anger over the IRS’s 2013 investigations challenging the tax-exempt status of right-leaning nonprofit groups, and Mercer funded a number of efforts calling for Koskinen’s impeachment.

On March 29, at least 30 conservative leaders, including a Heritage Foundation representative, converged on the White House for an off-the-record meeting with Trump aides. The groups pressed a range of agendas, especially urging Koskinen’s firing, said one attendee, President Tom Fitton of the nonprofit group Judicial Watch.

In a phone interview, Fitton said “the conservative movement is united in its belief there need to be changes at the IRS,” but he voiced frustration “that the Trump administration seems to be of two minds on whether or not to replace” Koskinen before his term expires.

Fitton declined to identify other attendees, and the Trump White House has abandoned a longtime practice of publicly releasing visitor logs.

The meeting was organized by White House aide Paul Teller, who worked with Rebekah Mercer on Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s failed Republican presidential campaign – an effort that Robert Mercer backed with $13.5 million in donations to an independent, pro-Cruz super PAC freed of the usual contribution limits. Mercer gave millions of dollars more to the committee after Cruz bowed out and the super PAC threw its financial allegiance to Trump.

Other groups that have joined the anti-IRS and anti-Koskinen choruses also got money from the Mercer foundation – $600,000 to the Cato Institute in 2014 and 2015 and $250,000 to Citizens for Self-Governance in 2014.

Perhaps the biggest Mercer foundation beneficiary has been the Citizens United Foundation, which received $3.8 million from 2011 through 2015. The foundation’s advocacy arm, Citizens United, wants Koskinen to be impeached. It also spearheaded attacks on Clinton last year over her use of a personal email account to conduct official business during eight years as secretary of state. David Bossie, who is president of both Citizens United entities, and Rebekah Mercer collaborated on the super PAC that backed Trump and later as members of Trump’s transition team.

“Bob (Mercer) has always been very good at leveraging his money” in both business and politics, said Nick Patterson, a Renaissance co-founder and former intelligence code-breaker who recruited Mercer to the hedge fund in 1993. “Bob’s been very dissatisfied with U.S. politics for many years.”

Spokespeople for the Heritage Foundation, Cato, Citizens for Self-Governance and Citizens United did not respond to requests for comment.

Robert Mercer became co-CEO at Renaissance, or RenTech, in November 2009 as the federal government was cracking down on abuses that had contributed to the nation’s worst financial crisis since the Depression.

As a high-volume, high-frequency trader, RenTech’s role in the crisis attracted scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the IRS. Federal agents were alarmed by what they found.

In 2010, the IRS issued a public memorandum warning hedge funds and banks about using “basket options,” structures in which banks loaned funds for the traders to purchase derivatives, which they held in “baskets.” It didn’t mention RenTech by name.

The IRS memo said that hedge funds – not their partner banks – controlled the underlying assets and thus should pay taxes at a higher capital gains rate.

Some hedge funds and banks stopped using basket options, but RenTech persisted.

Then, in July 2014, Democratic Chairman Carl Levin of the Senate Investigations Subcommittee and its ranking Republican, Arizona Sen. John McCain, issued the report accusing Renaissance of a giant tax dodge on hundreds of millions of options trades dating to 1999.

The panel said basket-trading also had enabled RenTech to dramatically increase its leverage, meaning it could borrow up to 10 times more money against its securities portfolio.

Following the Senate investigation, the IRS issued a notice in 2015 that left no doubt basket-option contracts were taxable as ordinary income.

Without identifying the affected party, IRS attorney Martin confirmed in a phone interview that one ongoing IRS enforcement case stems from basket trades. He said such options cases came down to ensuring that financial instruments were defined for what they really were.

“If you are going to call it a derivative . . . it has to function like a derivative,” he said. “And if it functions like a brokerage account, that’s how it has to be treated.”

The Renaissance case is not yet in tax court.

In the years since the case began, the father-daughter Mercer team has set an agenda that amounts to a full-fledged assault on the established order.

Besides the IRS, targets have included former President Barack Obama, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Reserve, the Department of Justice, various Democratic and moderate Republican members of Congress, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and burdensome regulations and agencies that hinder Mercer’s energy investments.

Mercer has called the Civil Rights Act of 1964 a mistake and has voiced disdain for other federal measures to protect the rights of African-Americans and other minorities.

The Mercers’ foundation gave nearly $11 million from 2011 to 2014 to the Media Research Center, an advocacy group whose “sole mission,” according to its website, “is to expose and neutralize the propaganda arm of the Left: the national news media.”

In a rare public statement weeks before Trump’s upset victory, the Mercers said they believe that “America is finally fed up and disgusted with its political elite.”

“Trump is channeling this disgust,” they said, “and those among the political elite who quake before the boom-box of media blather do not appreciate the apocalyptic choice that America faces.”

In 2010, the same year the IRS issued its memo, the Supreme Court handed down a landmark ruling lifting restraints on how much money wealthy donors such as the Mercers may spend to influence election outcomes.

RenTech soon tripled its lobbying expenditures. Last year, it paid $300,000 to a Washington lobbyist and tax strategist, James Miller, a former high-ranking attorney in the IRS’s office of chief counsel. Miller’s public disclosures say his lobbying topics included taxes on derivatives.

And by 2014 the Mercer Family Foundation had distributed $70 million in donations, mainly to conservative nonprofit groups.

By 2016, Renaissance’s founder and chairman, Jim Simons, was one of the Democratic Party’s top backers, and Mercer was a leading Republican donor, making RenTech a leading player in national politics.

Some of Mercer’s projects sought to unseat his Republican adversaries, such as McCain, who became the target of negative ad campaigns during a primary race.

Meanwhile, Rebekah Mercer accumulated so much clout she has been credited with influencing Trump’s choices of several top appointees, including Bannon, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, resigned in February after revelations that he had misled the White House about post-election discussions with Russia’s ambassador.

In January, Rebekah Mercer attended a private meeting in which she had “substantative communications” with Jay Clayton, Trump’s likely nominee to chair the SEC, Clayton later revealed in response to questions from the Senate Banking Committee in advance of his confirmation hearings. The SEC regulates hedge funds.

The Mercers’ struggle didn’t end with Trump’s election.

Bannon, the former Mercer political strategist who now speaks for the White House, seemed to capsulize it in a speech to conservative activists in February.

The goal, he said, amounts to nothing less than unfettered American capitalism and the “deconstruction of the administrative state.”

Christianson is a McClatchy special correspondent.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politic ... 54324.html

seemslikeadream » Sat Jun 17, 2017 7:32 am wrote::P
Washington, D.C. is now officially out of lawyers. Emergency legal support is being brought in from New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, etc.

Former Trump campaign adviser Michael Caputo has been contacted by FBI in Russia probe and has hired his own attorney, a source confirms.

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Trump Parscale Chart
Chart below displays open-source information showing organizations and people connected to President Trump and Brad Parscale as of June 2017. Source links are provided below the chart. Also see SCL/Cambridge Analytica chart and Rosneft-Trump-Putin chart.

Image

Source Links as of June 2017:
PAC payments 2016 election cycle — Open Secrets — (Donald J Trump for President $87,838,376 & Trump Make America Great Again Committee $3,702,533)
Giles Parscale website
Parscale Media LLC — Incorporated 4 Oct 2005 — Active
Parscale Properties LLC — Incorporated 24 Aug 2013 — Active
DevDemon website
Vector Media acquires DevDemon from Parscale in January 2017
Parscale’s El Technology Group, LLC — Incorporated 7 Aut 2003 (status: Franchis Tax Ended)
Lara Trump hired by Giles Parscale March 2017
America First Priorities — Parscale — Ayers — Obst — Bossie — Pierson — Gates
Rick Gates business partner with Paul Manafort
Giles Parscale hired Harris Media
Cambridge Analytica’s Alexander Nix meets Brad Parscale
SCL Balkans in Macedonia — Nicola Spasov & Vlado Andonovski
Rating Center team — Nicola Spasov & Vlado Andonovski
Machiavelli Strategies— Nicola Spasov — Edmond Ademi — Mitch Kates
Additional info not yet in chart:
Parscale purchased tv ad space through National Media
Parscale shared office in Trump Tower with Bannon, Conway and Bossie

https://medium.com/@wsiegelman/trump-pa ... ff531064ef



Steve Bannon “crapping” himself over probe into Donald Trump campaign’s Russian data connections
By Bill Palmer
Updated: 12:16 am EDT Sat Jun 17, 2017 | 0
Home » Politics

The House of Representatives investigation into Donald Trump’s Russia scandal is expanding to include the Trump campaign’s possible data connections to Russia, and is bringing in the campaign’s digital director Brad Parscale for questioning. But according to a political insider, this development has Steve Bannon spooked, as he was closely involved with that digital effort.
After the news broke that the House is indeed probing the Trump campaign’s digital data efforts (link), Republican political strategist Rick Wilson posted the following: “A little bird tells me that a certain White House staff member whose name rhymes with Beeve Stannon is crapping diamonds over Parscale.” (link). This raises a number of possibilities for where this might lead.
During the 2016 election cycle, immediately prior to officially joining the Donald Trump campaign, Steve Bannon was running a voter data analysis company called Cambridge Analytica. Although there is no publicly available proof, there has long been widespread suspicion that the company may have been working with voter data stolen by Russian hackers – both during the 2016 U.S. election and during the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom which preceded it. If this were to be proven about Bannon’s company, and if it were to be tied to Brad Parscale’s online voter data efforts for the Donald Trump campaign, it could be legally devastating for everyone involved. It raises the question of what the House committee knows that the public doesn’t. And the news may be even worse for Bannon.
According to another political insider, Claude Taylor, Steve Bannon is now under investigation for obstruction and physically threatening other members of the White House staff (link). In the past months the Trump-Russia scandal and investigation has largely been focused on the likes of Jeff Sessions, Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, and Michael Flynn. But now it appears the Russia investigation spotlight may finally be increasingly shifting toward Steve Bannon.
http://www.palmerreport.com/politics/st ... ssia/3492/


seemslikeadream » Sat Jun 10, 2017 4:23 pm wrote:
Along with RNC operatives dispatched to San Antonio, the operation employed staff from Cambridge Analytica, the U.S.-based offshoot of a British company that deploys what it calls “psychographics,” research using personality, values and other voter traits for targeting.



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The Man Behind Trump’s Bid to Finally Take Digital Seriously

BRAD PARSCALE IS a survivor—at least in Donald Trump’s universe. Today, Parscale, Trump’s digital director, is one of the last men standing as the Trump campaign’s revolving door keeps spinning. And with 80 days left in the campaign, he’s about to get a lot busier.

Trump has cycled through campaign personnel—first Corey Lewandowski, and then today Paul Manafort. Through it all, Parscale has kept his head down, working on the campaign since before Trump even announced his candidacy publicly. But from an office in San Antonio, far from the Washington—New York hub of campaign drama, his influence has only grown.

The bearded, 6-foot-7-inch Kansan was there in Cleveland during the Republican convention, hopping into a car with Trump’s social media manager and pushing his way through the chaos on the convention floor to shoot a Facebook Live video of Trump’s children the night their father received the official nomination. Through it all, he’s remained out of the spotlight, but that may soon change. Tomorrow, the Federal Election Commission releases the presidential campaigns’ July financial disclosures. Parscale says the Trump campaign’s ledger will show an $8.4 million payment to his digital marketing firm, about 90 percent of which was spent on digital ads.1 It’s a massive leap that shows Trump may finally be getting serious about a digital strategy that goes beyond tweets.

In June, the Trump campaign spent just $1.63 million on digital advertising, which itself was still dramatically more than the $21,000 Parscale’s firm, Giles-Parscale, made between October and the end of December 2015. During that same time period, the Clinton campaign paid nearly 100 times that to its digital consulting firm, Bully Pulpit Interactive. During primary season, when his poll numbers were strong, Trump utilized free media exposure to gain an edge on his competitors. Now that Clinton’s dominating the polls, it seems, Trump is not only raising money ($80 million in July), he’s spending it too. And Parscale is helping him do it online.

“Mr. Trump understands the value of digital operations,” he says, “and he’s been extremely supportive of this operation.”


Me and Mr. Trump
Parscale, who grew up in Kansas, says he sees a lot of himself in the man he calls “Mr. Trump.” For starters, like Trump, he’s a political novice who has built a professional reputation for himself in Texas but has never worked in Washington. “Brad is a non-traditional guy, and he’s good for a non-traditional campaign,” says Vincent Harris, a Republican digital strategist who briefly worked for Trump’s campaign.

But more than that, Parscale feels his story parallels Trump’s rise in business. Parscale started out with a small investment in 2004. (Parscale’s was his own $500. Trump’s was his father’s $1 million). He began by cold-calling local clients but soon graduated to major contracts with the likes of the Trump Organization, which led to gigs building websites for Trump Winery and the Eric Trump Foundation. Now he’s managing multi-million dollar advertising budgets for perhaps the most-watched man in the world.

In conversation, Parscale expresses fierce loyalty for his controversial boss. He says Trump gave “a farm boy from Kansas” a chance. “When I was successful, he continued to reward me over and over again, because I worked hard and produced success,” he says.

Still, while his boss called for boycotting Apple and prefers talking about the glory days of trade in Pennsylvania steel country, Parscale exhibits the the forward-looking attitude of the typical tech exec. Among other things, he recently helped found a group called Tech Bloc in San Antonio, which represents the tech industry’s interests there. Among its biggest accomplishments was pushing San Antonio’s city council to reverse its decision to ban Uber from the city. Parscale is proud to say he was “rider zero” for Uber when they launched.

“Tech can be something that can be great for us. We don’t need to fear it,” Parscale says.

And yet the Trump campaign has lagged in embracing tech, both as a campaign tool and a policy priority. Unlike Clinton, Trump has not released anything resembling a tech policy agenda. And while Trump initially rejected the need for data as a crucial tool for targeting voters, Clinton has built a huge tech team in Brooklyn, drawing talent from the likes of Google, Twitter, and Facebook. Even some of Trump’s primary season competitors outstripped his campaign in terms of tech. Now, Trump’s team is finally trying to catch up, and Parscale is at the center.

This Ain’t Hollywood
Just before Trump spoke at the Republican convention, Parscale made a six-figure ad buy on Twitter, purchasing the promoted hashtag, #TextTrump88022. Meanwhile, the campaign has released a truly odd series of ads that feature Trump and various shots of astronauts and other space imagery.

For Harris, who ran digital for Sen. Rand Paul’s 2016 presidential bid, it’s the weirdness of these ads that makes them work. “I think the Trump campaign has shown again to Beltway consultants that this isn’t about $50,000 Hollywood video shoots,” Harris says. “This is about effective digital operations. It’s gritty. It’s fast-paced, and it’s about what the base wants to hear.”

Trump’s attempt to make up the gap via digital ads will be a difficult battle for a candidate who’s already starting from behind.
There is, of course, another reason why Trump’s campaign has to spend more on digital advertising, and that is because the campaign has not reserved much television time. According to a July report in AdAge, between July and November, Trump and his PACs had reserved $654,455 in TV and radio advertising compared to $111 million by Hillary Clinton and her PACs. Though he just recently spent $4 million on a new ad buy, that’s still a small amount compared to what Clinton has planned. That could make Trump’s attempt to make up the gap via digital ads a difficult battle for a candidate who’s already starting from behind and whose base is less likely to see those ads anyway.

“Republican voters in the general election are traditionally older,” says Harris. “Older people traditionally get their news and information from television.”

Still, Parscale is satisfied that the investment in digital produced a serious return for Trump in July. He declined to say what percentage of the $80 million raised was the result of the surge in digital ad spending. But it seems unlikely the campaign will let up on the digital front. Trump’s new campaign CEO, Steve Bannon, has spent the last few years sitting atop a far-right digital media empire. He seems to know how the web works. And finally Trump seems ready to spend the money to make the web work for him, if it’s not already too late.
https://www.wired.com/2016/08/man-behin ... seriously/


S.A. web firm might be included in probe of the Trump-Russia ties
By Bill Lambrecht, Washington BureauMay 26, 2017 Updated: May 26, 2017 7:52pm

Image
Brad Parscale, who was the Trump campaign's digital director, waits for an elevator at Trump Tower, Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) Photo: Carolyn Kaster, STF / Associated Press / Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Photo: Carolyn Kaster, STF / Associated Press
IMAGE 1 OF 4 Brad Parscale, who was the Trump campaign's digital director, waits for an elevator at Trump Tower, Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
WASHINGTON — The FBI’s wide-ranging criminal investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election may include scrutiny of the Trump campaign’s San Antonio-based digital operation overseen by senior White House adviser Jared Kushner.

CNN reported that along with Kushner’s contacts with Russians and his relationship with fired national security adviser Michael Flynn, the FBI is looking at the campaign’s 2016 data analytics programs conducted largely out of San Antonio under the direction of local digital advertising executive Brad Parscale.

In looking at possible ties with Russia, the FBI has collected data on computer bots — software that runs automated scripts over the internet — that pushed negative information on Hillary Clinton and positive information on Trump, the cable network reported.

An FBI spokesman declined comment Friday, and the White House did not respond to messages.

Parscale did not respond to phone messages left at Giles-Parscale, the San Antonio web design and digital marketing company that he co-owns.

Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, has not been accused of wrongdoing. His lawyer, Jamie Gorelick, said he will cooperate with the FBI if asked.

“Mr. Kushner previously volunteered to share with Congress what he knows about these meetings,” she said in a statement, referring to reports of meetings with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and with a Russian banker. “He will do the same if he is contacted in connection with any other inquiry.”

Parscale, 41, became heavily involved in the Trump campaign after designing a website for the campaign exploratory committee and carrying out other tasks for the Trump family. He worked under Kushner. By the campaign’s end, Parscale ran Trump’s digital operation, media buys and overall advertising, an exceptionally large role for someone with little experience in political campaigns.

“It was a data-driven campaign, so I was in the middle of it all,” Parscale said in an interview with the San Antonio Express-News after the election.

Federal Election Commission reports showed that Giles-Parscale received over $91 million from the Trump campaign and an allied super PAC over an 18-month period.

Parscale noted that while his company ended “in a healthy situation,” much of that money was paid for advertising and vendors.

Parscale remained on the campaign payroll through January and is associated with Trump’s re-election committee. FEC records show that his company received an additional $1.6 million through March for what was described as digital consultation and online advertising.

In the “Project Alamo” operation, Parscale had over 100 people employed on Trump’s behalf last year in San Antonio, many of them digital and media experts.

They worked closely with the Republican National Committee, which invested heavily in data and digital technology after losing the previous two presidential elections. The RNC provided the Trump campaign with a massive database that included details on millions of voters’ attitudes, buying habits and personal information available from public and private sources, combined with information the party had gleaned from contacts over the years.

The Parscale-run operation relied heavily on Facebook both for targeting voters and fundraising, Parscale has said, noting that Facebook helped the campaign raise more than

$260 million.

Along with RNC operatives dispatched to San Antonio, the operation employed staff from Cambridge Analytica, the U.S.-based offshoot of a British company that deploys what it calls “psychographics,” research using personality, values and other voter traits for targeting.

Cambridge was paid $6 million for its work, which Republican operatives described as voter persuasion.

BusinessWeek quoted an unnamed member of the Trump campaign staff late in the campaign as saying that their digital operation used Facebook ads and other means to suppress Clinton’s vote totals with negative messages aimed at African-Americans, young women and segments of liberals.

Parscale said in an earlier interview with the Express-News that his operation’s ability to identify 14.4 million persuadable voters in several swing states just prior to the election was a key to Trump’s victory.

“That’s why we won. We knew just the voters we needed to turn out, and we turned them out in big numbers,” he said.

Parscale’s success earned him the Digital Strategist of the Year Award, presented in March by the American Association of Political Consultants.

While not commenting on the report about FBI scrutiny of Kushner, Parscale has used his Twitter account in recent days to step up attacks on CNN and other news outlets with more than a dozen posts since last weekend.

“SO fake news,” Parscale tweeted May 20 in response to a CNN report that a former Trump staffer wants the president to set up a fund to help associates caught in the Russia investigation pay their legal bills. “Let’s fight back against @CNN.”

In another tweet that day, he wrote: “#1 lesson I’ve learned. Media is the enemy of this country.”
http://www.expressnews.com/news/local/a ... 177097.php
[/quote]


Robert Mercer 7 Billion Reasons to Steal an Election
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40573&p=639997&hilit=Cambridge+Analytica#p639997
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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