Did Jared Kushner’s Data Operation Help Select Facebook Targets for the Russians?
The Russians used social media to rile the electorate. Investigators wonder if they had inside help.

The headlines were about Facebook admitting it had sold ad space to Russian groups trying to sway the 2016 presidential campaign. But investigators shrugged: they’d known or assumed for months that Facebook, as well as Twitter and other social-media platforms, were a tool used in the Kremlin’s campaign. “The only thing that’s surprising is that more revelations like this haven’t come out sooner,” said Congressman Mike Quigley, an Illinois Democrat and a member of the House Intelligence Committee. “And I expect that more will.”

Mapping the full Russian propaganda effort is important. Yet investigators in the House, Senate, and special counsel Robert Mueller’s office are equally focused on a more explosive question: did any Americans help target the memes and fake news to crucial swing districts and wavering voter demographics? “By Americans, you mean, like, the Trump campaign?” a source close to one of the investigations said with a dark laugh. Indeed: probers are intrigued by the role of Jared Kushner, the now-president’s son-in-law, who eagerly took credit for crafting the Trump campaign’s online efforts in a rare interview right after the 2016 election. “I called somebody who works for one of the technology companies that I work with, and I had them give me a tutorial on how to use Facebook micro-targeting,” Kushner told Steven Bertoni of Forbes. “We brought in Cambridge Analytica. I called some of my friends from Silicon Valley who were some of the best digital marketers in the world. And I asked them how to scale this stuff . . . We basically had to build a $400 million operation with 1,500 people operating in 50 states, in five months to then be taken apart. We started really from scratch.”

Kushner’s chat with Forbes has provided a veritable bakery’s worth of investigatory bread crumbs to follow. Brad Parscale, who Kushner hired to run the campaign’s San Antonio-based Internet operation, has agreed to be interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee.

Bigger questions, however, revolve around Cambridge Analytica. It is unclear how Kushner first became aware of the data-mining firm, but one of its major investors is billionaire Trump backer Robert Mercer. Mercer was also a principal patron of Breitbart News and Steve Bannon, who was a vice president of Cambridge Analytica until he joined the Trump campaign. “I think the Russians had help,” said Congresswoman Jackie Speier, a California Democrat who is a member of the House Intelligence Committee. “I’ve always wondered if Cambridge Analytica was part of that.” (Cambridge Analytica did not respond to a request for comment.)

More: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/09/jared-kushner-data-operation-russia-facebook

Facebook Gave Special Counsel Robert Mueller More Details on Russian Ad Buys Than Congress
Source: Wall Street Journal

Facebook Inc. has handed over to special counsel Robert Mueller detailed records about the Russian ad purchases on its platform that go beyond what it shared with Congress last week, according to people familiar with the matter.

The information Facebook shared with Mr. Mueller included copies of the ads and details about the accounts that bought them and the targeting criteria they used, the people familiar with the matter said. Facebook policy dictates that it would only turn over “the stored contents of any account,” including messages and location information, in response to a search warrant, some of them said.

A search warrant from Mr. Mueller would mean the special counsel now has a powerful tool in his arsenal to probe the details of how social media was used as part of a campaign of Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential election. Facebook hasn’t shared the same information with Congress in part because of concerns about disrupting the Mueller probe, and possibly running afoul of U.S. privacy laws, people familiar with the matter said.

A Facebook spokesman said the company continues to investigate and is cooperating with U.S. authorities. A spokesman for Mr. Mueller declined to comment on the investigation.

Read more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-gave-special-counsel-robert-mueller-more-details-on-russian-ad-buys-than-congress-1505514552

GOP Congressman Sought Trump Deal on WikiLeaks, Russia

Rep. Rohrabacher asks for pardon of Julian Assange in return for evidence of no 2016 election meddling

By Byron Tau,
Peter Nicholas and
Siobhan Hughes
Sept. 15, 2017 5:11 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON—A U.S. congressman contacted the White House this week trying to broker a deal that would end WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s U.S. legal troubles in exchange for what he described as evidence that Russia wasn’t the source of hacked emails published by the antisecrecy website during the 2016 presidential campaign.

More: https://www.wsj.com/articles/gop-congressman-sought-trump-deal-on-wikileaks-russia-1505509918?tesla=y

Lawyer says extradition of oligarch tied to Trump campaign chief imminent

Billionaire Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash is at "great risk" of being brought from Austria to face justice in a Chicago courtroom "within weeks," his lawyer told a federal judge Monday.

But prosecutors say they are concerned that Firtash — who is wanted on racketeering charges and has ties to President Donald Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort — will jump on a private jet to Russia if a Chicago judge rules against him before he is handed over to U.S. authorities.

They revealed in court for the first time that they wiretapped telephone conversations in which Firtash allegedly discussed a co-defendant's trip to Chicago to meet with Boeing executives.

Firtash, who has friends in Russian President Vladimir Putin's Kremlin, has been fighting extradition from Austria since his high profile 2014 arrest in Vienna. Accused of masterminding an international titanium-mining racket involving Boeing, he claims he was targeted by the Obama administration as punishment for Putin's annexation of Crimea.

More: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chicagoinc/ct-dmitry-firtash-inc-20170911-story.html

Rice told House investigators why she unmasked senior Trump officials

Washington (CNN)Former national security adviser Susan Rice privately told House investigators that she unmasked the identities of senior Trump officials to understand why the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates was in New York late last year, multiple sources told CNN.

The New York meeting preceded a separate effort by the UAE to facilitate a back-channel communication between Russia and the incoming Trump White House.

The crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, arrived in New York last December in the transition period before Trump was sworn into office for a meeting with several top Trump officials, including Michael Flynn, the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his top strategist Steve Bannon, sources said.

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But the Trump Tower meeting came shortly before the UAE brokered a meeting to open lines of communications with the United States and Russia, with a clandestine January meeting in the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean, according to reports in CNN and The Washington Post. That meeting is now under investigation on Capitol Hill, though it's unclear whether Rice mentioned the Seychelles meeting in the testimony.

More: http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/13/politics/susan-rice-house-investigators-unmasked-trump-officials/index.html

Intensifying Russia probes could pit Hill against Mueller

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And the Senate intelligence committee is pushing to obtain new information about the unusual circumstances surrounding Smith, the veteran GOP operative who told The Wall Street Journal he was on a mission to obtain the hacked Clinton emails. After the stories about his efforts were published this summer, Smith killed himself in a Minnesota hotel room.

Matt Tait, a cybersecurity expert who publicly acknowledged in July being contacted by Smith, is among those the Senate panel is interested in hearing from, sources said.

Tait declined to comment to CNN.

Link: http://edition.cnn.com/2017/09/05/politics/russia-mueller-hill/index.html?sr=twCNN090517russia-mueller-hill1156AMStory