ABC News reports that sources have told it that the special counsel investigating Russia-Trump collusion in the 2016 election has turned its attention to Trump campaign ties to Cambridge Analytica.
Cambridge Analytica was brought on by then-Trump campaign digital advisor Brad Parscale in early June 2016, after the data science firm pitched him on its services, sources told ABC News. Three Cambridge Analytica employees, including two data scientists, immediately moved to San Antonio to embed with Parscale's firm and by August, the number of fulltime staffers in Texas ballooned to 13.
The team led by Matt Oczkowski, who served as the data firm's chief product officer, was divided into three groups focusing on data science, research and polling and marketing.
Parscale would eventually leave Texas to move into Trump Tower in September, and the data firm sent a mid-level employee with him to interpret daily polling reports, according to sources.
Cambridge Analytica was one entity involved in creating the voter information and fundraising database now known as Project Alamo, built jointly by staffers from the RNC, the Trump campaign and Parscale's firm with data supplied by the RNC and the campaign, sources said.
Trump's people issued weasel words in response:
A spokesperson for the Trump campaign told ABC News in a statement that they “used the RNC for its voter data and not Cambridge Analytica. Using the RNC data was one of the best choices the campaign made. Any claims that voter data were used from another source to support the victory in 2016 are false.”
Trump hair by Michael Vadon, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link
