Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wray made an accusation last night that tonight yielded proof: That Rudy Giuliani's law firm warned Trump megadonor Rebekah Mercer, Steve Bannon, and Cambridge Analytica's Alexander Nix that having foreign nationals working on political campaigns in the US was illegal.
They ignored those warnings.
Transcript:
ARI MELBER: Rudy Giuliani's law firm warned the campaign and they ignored those warnings?
CHRISTOPHER WILEY: They did, they completely disregarded it.
MELBER: That's not nothing. And to verify those allegations, we wanted to see the memo, so we asked for it. And I can tell you on TV for the first time, we got it.
This is not some low-level paperwork, this is from the law firm of one of Donald Trump's earliest allies, Rudy Giuliani, addressing one of Trump's biggest donors and his future campaign manager and the now suspended CEO of this controversial firm and let me show you what we got.
He warned them, this firm, not to do something that the whistleblower told us they went on to do. Anna Scheckter obtained this memo and she pointed out that the lawyers directly advising Mercer, Bannon and Nix, right there in 2014, telling them that Nix should avoid the possibility of breaking US law and thus recuse himself of management of these American campaigns and clients involving these elections. Also warning him that the analysis of Cambridge's trove of data should be conducted by, wait for it, US Citizens.
This was all before the 2016 Trump campaign, to be clear. And a source telling NBC right now that Cambridge embedded foreigners in other congressional races. The whistleblower, Christopher Wiley tells us this was actually common with up to 20 foreigners working on these GOP congressional races.
Cambridge continues to deny their CEO did play the kind of strategic or operational role that Giuliani's firm told him not to play. I want to be very clear about what we have and what we don't know yet. It will take a lot more investigating to estimate whether Cambridge disregarding this advice in this one secret memo we have, actually disregard of it actually led to the breaking of any laws.
Let's widen out. All of this news comes on a night when Putin's links to felonious hacking are more public than ever, as Trump taps this new national security advisor John Bolton who has the duty to investigate the facts even if trump likes Putin. And he has the duty to -- newly understood role in our politics, even if Trump hired them. But come to think of it, that's something these two men actually have in common. Because John Bolton's super PAC spent over a million dollars employing Cambridge Analytica and using their data.
