Investigations into Russian involvement in the 2016 US Presidential election
On 18 May 2017,
Time reported that the
US Congress was investigating CA in connection with
Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. The report alleges that CA may have coordinated the spread of Russian propaganda using its microtargetting capabilities.
[44] According to the Trump campaign's digital operations chief, CA worked "side-by-side" with representatives from
Facebook,
Alphabet Inc. and
Twitter on Trump's digital campaign activities.
[45]
On 4 August 2017,
Michael Flynn, who is under investigation by US counterintelligence for his contacts with Russian officials
, amended a public financial filing to reflect that he had served in an advisory role in an agreement with CA during the 2016 Trump campaign.
[46][47]
On 25 October 2017, Julian Assange confirmed on Twitter
[48] that he had been approached by Cambridge Analytica, but said he had rejected its proposal. Assange's tweet followed a story in
The Daily Beast[49] alleging that Cambridge Analytica chief executive Alexander Nix had proposed a collaboration with Wikileaks to find the 33,000 emails that had been deleted from Clinton's private server.
CNN said it had been told by several unnamed sources
[50] that Nix intended to turn the Clinton email archive released to the public by the State Department into a searchable database for the campaign or a pro-Trump
political action committee.
On 14 December 2017, it was revealed that
Robert Mueller had requested during the fall of 2017 that Cambridge Analytica turn over the emails of any of its employees who worked on the Trump campaign, as part of his
investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.
[51]