The United States Senate Intelligence Committee is “pursuing a wide-ranging investigation” into ex-White House adviser Steve Bannon’s activities during the 2016 election, Reuters reports, and looking into what possible co-conspirators George Papadopoulos and Carter Page had to do with those activities.
They're looking to determine “What Bannon might know about any contacts” that 2 Trump campaign advisers, George Papadopoulos and Carter Page, had with the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The probe is also looking into Bannon’s “role” at the dirty political data analysis firm Cambridge Analytica, which Trump's campaign under Bannon hired to “target messages to potentially sympathetic voters.”
Before he joined the Trump campaign, Bannon was vice president of Cambridge Analytica. The company has officially been dismantled after a UK probe into its role in Brexit.
Reuters reports that Senate Intel is also trying to interview other witnesses about what “Cambridge Analytica and affiliated companies” did in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections.
Bannon is to be interviewed by the committee in late November, Reuters reports.
Papadopoulos, a consultant, initially advised the presidential campaign of Republican hopeful Ben Carson before joining the Trump campaign. Page is also a consultant, who had business contacts in Russia.
On Sept. 7, Papadopoulos was sentenced to 14 days in prison. He had pleaded guilty last year to lying to FBI agents about the timing and significance of his contacts with Russians, including a professor who told him the Russians had “dirt” on Trump’s Democratic presidential rival, Hillary Clinton.
No charges have been filed against Page.
