The Associated Press reports President Trump's 2020 campaign is working with a data firm that looks a lot like its 2016 data firm, even though the latter declared bankruptcy after being exposed for using unauthorized, harvested Facebook data and after its CEO got caught on camera bragging about his duplicitous political tactics.
The AP confirmed that at least four former Cambridge Analytica employees are affiliated with Data Propria, a new company specializing in voter and consumer targeting work similar to Cambridge Analytica’s efforts before its collapse. The company’s former head of product, Matt Oczkowski, leads the new firm, which also includes Cambridge Analytica’s former chief data scientist.
Oczkowski denied a link to the Trump campaign, but acknowledged that his new firm has agreed to do 2018 campaign work for the Republican National Committee. Oczkowski led the Cambridge Analytica data team which worked on Trump’s successful 2016 campaign.
The AP learned of Data Propria’s role in Trump’s re-election effort as a result of conversations held with political contacts and prospective clients in recent weeks by Oczkowski. In one such conversation, which took place in a public place and was overheard by two AP reporters, Oczkowski said he and Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, were “doing the president’s work for 2020.”
In addition, a person familiar with Data Propria’s Washington efforts, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect business relationships, confirmed to the AP that Trump-related 2020 work already had begun at the firm along the lines of Cambridge Analytica’s 2016 work.
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Oczkowski had previously told the AP the firm had no intention of seeking political clients. After being informed the AP had overheard him directly discussing campaign work, he said his young company had changed course and that whatever he’d said about the 2020 campaign would have been speculative.
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Parscale told the AP that he has not even begun awarding contracts for the 2020 campaign, which he was appointed to manage in March.
“I am laser-focused on the 2018 midterms and holding the House and increasing our seats in the Senate,” he said. “Once we do those things, I’ll start working on re-electing President Trump.”
London-based Cambridge Analytica was accused of playing a key role in the 2014 breach of 87 million Facebook users’ personal data. The company said it did not use the information for Trump’s 2016 campaign, but some former employees have disputed that. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that it was “entirely possible” the social media data ended up being used in Russian propaganda efforts.
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The description of Data Propria’s efforts overheard by the AP reporters tracks closely with the services Cambridge Analytica provided to both commercial clients and Trump’s 2016 campaign, including profiling voters based on data about them in a process known as “psychography.” ...
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Oczkowski told the AP that three of the people on Data Propria’s 10-person team are Cambridge Analytica alumni, but said they were focused on campaign operations and data analysis — not behavioral psychology ...
Brad Parscale is tied to Data Propria, not just as a prospective client but also as someone with a stake in its financial success.
Parscale is a part owner of Data Propria’s parent company, a publicly traded firm called Cloud Commerce that bought his digital marketing business in August. Over the last year, Cloud Commerce has largely rebuilt itself around Parscale’s former company, now rebranded Parscale Digital. Parscale sits on Cloud Commerce’s board of directors and provides the company with the majority of its $2.9 million in revenue, according to the company’s most recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
By working with a Cloud Commerce subsidiary, the Trump campaign could be helping Parscale profit beyond his $15,000 monthly campaign retainer and the commissions he has been collecting on Trump’s digital advertising spending.
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Even though Parscale is not directly receiving money from Data Propria work, the firms provide each other with business and Data Propria’s success would help Cloud Commerce pay off the money it owes Parscale.
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Trevor Potter, a Republican who once headed the Federal Election Commission and now leads the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center, said it was unusual for an incumbent president’s campaign to direct large amounts of business to outside firms tied to his campaign manager.
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An AP investigation of Cloud Commerce in March found that a former CEO of its predecessor firm pleaded guilty to stock fraud in 2008 and remained active in Cloud Commerce’s affairs until at least 2015. Cloud Commerce says the man has had no connection with its business since at least 2011.
The AP also found discrepancies in the professional biography of current Cloud Commerce chief executive Andrew Van Noy, who has told investors that he worked for Morgan Stanley and was a private equity executive in the years immediately preceding his arrival at Cloud Commerce in 2011.
Van Noy’s August 2010 Utah bankruptcy filing conflicts with that portrayal, showing he spent most of the prior two and a half years unemployed. The filings also reveal that Van Noy had been accused of selling unlicensed securities and using $100,000 of an investor’s money for personal purposes.
“Luckily I have not had to go to the homeless shelter,” Van Noy wrote to that investor in 2011 after the man asked what had happened to his investment. After the man sued for fraud, Van Noy agreed to pay him $105,000.
A year later, he became president of Cloud Commerce.
Full story: AP: Trump 2020 working with ex-Cambridge Analytica staffers (AP)