During the 2016 campaign, Julian Assange and Wikileaks acted to distribute information stolen from servers in the United States by Russian agents.
During the 2016 campaign, Alexander Nix and Cambridge Analytica not only provided data to the Trump campaign, but may have helped Russian agents use propaganda to target voters in critical areas.
So it comes as little surprise that Donald Trump’s favorite data firm made an effort to hook up with Donald Trump’s favorite source of stolen emails.
Nix, who heads Cambridge Analytica, told a third party that he reached out to Assange about his firm somehow helping the WikiLeaks editor release Clinton’s missing emails, according to two sources familiar with a congressional investigation into interactions between Trump associates and the Kremlin. Those sources also relayed that, according to Nix’s email, Assange told the Cambridge Analytica CEO that he didn’t want his help, and preferred to do the work on his own.
While this offers a new connection between Trump’s team and WikiLeaks, it’s not really necessary to look too hard to find such a link.
GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump on Monday praised WikiLeaks for publishing Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s hacked emails.
“I love WikiLeaks,” he told listeners during a campaign rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., prompting prolonged “Lock her up!” chants from his audience. “It’s amazing how nothing is secret today when you talk about the Internet.”
On more than one occasion, Trump walked the stage at a rally holding printouts from WikiLeaks, reading the emails that he already knew were stolen by illegal intrusion into Democratic servers.
When it comes to charges that Nix tried to contact Assange, there’s another source.
After publication, Assange provided this statement to The Daily Beast: ”We can confirm an approach by Cambridge Analytica and can confirm that it was rejected by WikiLeaks.”
WikiLeaks apparently has standards, something that’s made abundantly clear by Assange’s continued residence in the Ecuadorian embassy, a home he adopted while seeking asylum from charges of sexual assault and rape.