In Hidden-Camera Exposé, Cambridge Analytica Executives Boast Of Role In Trump Win
March 21, 20183:27 AM ET
Scott Neuman
Twitter
Cambridge Analytica Chief Executive Alexander Nix leaves the company's offices in central London on Tuesday. He was suspended amid a controversy about the company's use of social media data.
Dominic Lipinski/AP
Top executives at Cambridge Analytica, the U.K.-based firm embroiled in a controversy over the mining of Facebook user data, have been secretly recorded describing the stealthy methods they used to help get Donald Trump elected.
In the third installment of a hidden-camera exposé by Britain's Channel 4, in a conversation between CEO Alexander Nix and two other Cambridge Analytica executives with an undercover reporter, the company officials also appear to allude to tactics that may violate U.S. campaign finance laws.
Channel 4 YouTube
Nix tells the reporter, posing as a political consultant seeking help with campaigns in Sri Lanka, that he has met Donald Trump "many times," while another senior executive says the "defeat crooked Hillary" advertising campaign was the brainchild of the firm.
"We did all the research, all the data, all the analytics, all the targeting, we ran all the digital campaign, the television campaign and our data informed all the strategy," Nix told the undercover reporter.
"We just put information into the bloodstream of the Internet and then watch it grow, give it a little push every now and again over time to watch it take shape," he says. "And so this stuff infiltrates the online community, but with no branding, so it's unattributable, untrackable."
To help disseminate that information, the managing director of CA Political, Mark Turnbull, describes using "proxies," such as charity and activist groups. "[We] use them — feed them the material and they do the work."
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