mercer and steve bannon all connected to this? robert and rebecca mercer are basically the majority shareholders or owners of cambridge analytica. steve bannon for years was the top outside gatekeeper to the mersers. and alexander knicks e-mailed according to cnn s reporting becca mercer sark had he these communications with julian assange. bannon was previously on the board of cambridge analytica and at least at one point he had a share of the company worth between $1 million and $5 million. what you have to understand when we talk about bannon, the mersers, and the trump campaign, is that these are relationships that have been in place for years. the mersers are it s a father-daughter duo, they re billionaires. roger mercer has a health fund that s extra naerdly lucrative and he s been investigating in years in the kind of causes that steve bannon has championed. they ve developed a relationship and then when bannon got on board with the trump campaign in the summer of 2016, the
according to my sources, that julian assange rebuffed him. after i reported that, i got a comment from julian assange who told me that that was correct, that he did, indeed, rebuff outreach from cambridge analytica. in the time since my story broke, of course, the trump campaign has pushed back against it in kind of an oblique way suggested they relied more on the rnc for their data needs. however, the trump campaign paid cambridge analytica upwards of $5 million over the course of the election cycle. it s hard to distance yourself from a company when you ve given them that much cash. so how are trump donors robert and rebecca mercer and steve bannon all connected to this? robert and rebecca mercer are basically the majority shareholders or owners of cambridge analytica. steve bannon for years was the top outside gatekeeper to the mercers. and alexander knicks e-mailed according to cnn s reporting becca mercer saying he had these communications with julian
the clinton campaign should own up to it, the trump campaign should own up to. we do opposition research, we hire companies that pay for opposition research, and that s just how it s done, right? bingo. that s why the cover-up is always bigger than the crime itself. betsy, what open questions still remain tonight? what will be interesting to find out is the specific day that alexander knicks sent this e-mail. my understanding, i don t think it s widely confirmed what day that was, it will be fascinating to get a sense of at what specific point in the month of i believe july he sent that communication to becca mercer. that could give us a hint as to what might have been motivating that. also, of course, it will be fascinating to see the complete text of that e-mail. my understanding is that no media outlet has reported the complete text. that may provide us more clues into the way that the mercers and knicks were thinking about any potential relationship or work that they hope t