Russian oligarch(s) met with Cambridge Analytica & asked about political targeting. Kushner & Bannon

[MelissaB]

in the thick of it.

Data Firm Tied to Trump Campaign Talked Business With Russians

... snip

Mr. Nix is a director of SCL Group, a British political and defense contractor, and chief executive of its American offshoot, Cambridge Analytica, which advised the Trump campaign. The firms’ employees, who often overlap, had contact in 2014 and 2015 with executives from Lukoil, the Russian oil giant.

Lukoil was interested in how data was used to target American voters, according to two former company insiders who said there were at least three meetings with Lukoil executives in London and Turkey. SCL and Lukoil denied that the talks were political in nature, and SCL also said there were no meetings in London.

The contacts took place as Cambridge Analytica was building a roster of Republican political clients in the United States — and harvesting the Facebook profiles of over 50 million users to develop tools it said could analyze voters’ behavior.

Cambridge Analytica also included extensive questions about Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, in surveys it was carrying out in American focus groups in 2014. It is not clear what — or which client — prompted the line of questioning, which asked for views on topics ranging from Mr. Putin’s popularity to Russian expansionism.

More: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/us/politics/cambridge-analytica-russia.html

[MelissaB]

1. Article from The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-academic-trawling-facebook-had-links-to-russian-university?CMP=share_btn_tw

[backtoblue]

2. This is a BIG deal

Nothing short of psychological warfare in order to win the presidency and infiltrate our government. Now we know a little more about why all the rays were jumping ship.

[BigmanPigman]

3. I have read about this all over the place

this week. If I am aware of it I than I am sure Mueller and his professional team of investigators in this specific dept/area of expertise have already been well aware of it and have had the info.
http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2018/politics/meet-the-mueller-team/

Go to the cyber team button...

Ryan Dickey was previously an assistant US attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia and also worked in the Justice Department's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section. He specializes in cyber-related prosecutions and was added to Mueller’s team in late 2017.
Role on Mueller team:
Dickey has been involved in the case against 13 Russian nationals and 3 Russian entities for allegedly meddling in the 2016 election by using social media to spread divisive political messages.
Notable cases:
Dickey was involved in the sprawling case against Megaupload, the online file sharing website that the Justice Department described as an “international organized criminal enterprise” that perpetrated “massive online piracy.” Dickey helped secure a guilty plea from an Estonian programmer involved in the case.
He was senior counsel in the case against the hacker known as Guccifer, a Romanian national who hacked the accounts of prominent Americans and was sentenced to prison in 2016. (Guccifer is unrelated to Guccifer 2.0, the online persona used by Russian intelligence operatives during the 2016 presidential election that claimed credit for hacking the Democratic National Committee.)

[Ilsa]

4. Happy to be Rec #5.

It is all coming together: Who in association with trump campaign conspired with which Russians to discuss who and how to target for their online mind games.

[dalton99a]

5. Kick