Republicans Say Their Campaigns Were Also Cambridge Analytica's Victims
"A campaign would have to be a special kind of stupid to knowingly and willingly engage a vendor that had a hint of impropriety."
Posted on March 21, 2018, at 4:24 p.m.
Tarini Parti
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Henry J. Gomez
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Republicans who have worked with the political data firm Cambridge Analytica say they are now being unfairly dragged into the unfolding scandal over how the company used private information from millions of Facebook users. And, they say, the company’s work wasn’t that useful anyway.
"We're the victims here," said a top former staffer from a US campaign that used the firm, who said there were never any legal or ethical concerns at the time about how Cambridge was acquiring data. They were in the dark, the staffer said, like the Facebook users whose data was stolen.
Cambridge broke onto the political scene in a big way in 2016, working on the presidential campaigns of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ben Carson, and eventually, for Donald Trump and the outside groups backing his candidacy. But the firm, which has deep ties to the GOP mega-donor Mercer family and to former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, did work on behalf of at least five US House and Senate campaigns, a state party committee, and two outside groups under the radar during 2014’s elections.
Now, the firm's former clients are finding themselves entangled in a web of complicated allegations that have opened them up to attacks. Most also say that the work the firm did for them — which, for some, was four years ago — wasn't good enough to worth dealing with the blowback and insinuations they are now facing.
“A campaign would have to be a special kind of stupid to knowingly and willingly engage a vendor that had a hint of impropriety. And that’s clearly not the case with these campaigns,” said the former top staffer, who spoke on the condition of not being named to avoid further pulling his former campaign into the current Cambridge news.
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https://www.buzzfeed.com/tariniparti/cambridge-analytica-republican-campaigns?utm_term=.uvgvggBqV#.rwOoGGbeP
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These scummy aggressors now want to characterize themselves as victims. What typical behavior from that lot. "Oooh - Ow-w-w-w, they kicked my widdle shin!" But before this they were on the attack to anyone unlike themselves. Bah!
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