Last Wednesday, 11 months into Donald Trump’s new world order, in the
first year of normalisation, a sudden unblurring of lines took place. A
shift. A door of perception swung open.
Because that was the day that the dramatis personae of two separate
Trump-Russia scandals smashed headlong into one another. A high-speed
news car crash between Cambridge Analytica and WikiLeaks, the two
organisations that arguably had the most impact on 2016, coming together
last week in one head-spinning scoop.
That day, we learned that Alexander Nix, the CEO of Cambridge Analytica,
the controversial data firm that helped Trump to power, had contacted
Julian Assange to ask him if he wanted “help” with WikiLeaks’s stash of
stolen e-mails.
That’s the stash of stolen e-mails that had such a devastating impact on
Hillary Clinton in the last months of the campaign. And this story
brought WikiLeaks, which the head of the CIA describes as a “hostile
intelligence service”, directly together with the Trump campaign for
which Cambridge Analytica worked. This is an amazing plot twist for the
company, owned by US billionaire Robert Mercer, which is already the
subject of investigations by the House intelligence committee, the
Senate intelligence committee, the FBI and, it was announced late on
Friday night, the Senate judiciary committee.
So far, so American. These are US scandals involving US politics and the
news made the headlines in US bulletins across US networks.
But it’s also Cambridge Analytica, the data analytics company, which has
its headquarters in central London and that, following a series of
articles about its role in Brexit in the Guardian and the Observer, is
also being investigated, by the Electoral Commission and the Information
Commissioner’s Office. The company that was spun out of a British
military contractor, is headed by an old Etonian and that responded to
our stories earlier this year by threatening to sue us. It’s our
Cambridge it’s named after, not the American one, and it was here that
it processed the voter files of 240mn US citizens.
It’s also here that this “hostile intelligence service” – WikiLeaks – is
based. The Ecuadorian embassy is just a few miles, as the crow flies,
from Cambridge Analytica’s head office. Because this is not just about
America. It’s about Britain, too. This is transatlantic. It’s not
possible to separate Britain and the US in this whole sorry mess – and I
say this as someone who has spent months trying. Where we see this most
clearly is in that other weird WikiLeaks connection: Nigel Farage.
Because that moment in March when Farage was caught tripping down the
steps of the Ecuadorian embassy was the last moment the lines suddenly
became visible. That the ideological overlaps between WikiLeaks and
Trump and Brexit were revealed to be not just lines, but a channel of
communication.
Because if there’s one person who’s in the middle of all of this, but
who has escaped any proper scrutiny, it’s Nigel Farage. That’s Nigel
Farage, who led the Leave. EU campaign, which is being investigated by
the Electoral Commission alongside Cambridge Analytica, about whether
the latter made an “impermissible donation” of services to the Leave
campaign. Nigel Farage who visited Donald Trump and then Julian Assange.
Who is friends with Steve Bannon and Robert Mercer. Who headed an
organisation – Ukip – which has multiple, public, visible but almost
entirely unreported Russian connections. Who is paid by the Russian
state via the broadcaster RT, which was banned last week from Twitter.
And who appears like clockwork on British television without any word of
this.
This is a power network that involves WikiLeaks and Farage, and
Cambridge Analytica and Farage, and Robert Mercer and Farage. Steve
Bannon, former vice-president of Cambridge Analytica, and Farage. It’s
Nigel Farage and Brexit and Trump and Cambridge Analytica and WikiLeaks…
and, if the Senate intelligence committee and the House intelligence
committee and the FBI are on to anything at all, somewhere in the middle
of all that, Russia.
Try to follow this on a daily basis and it’s one long headspin: a
spider’s web of relationships and networks of power and patronage and
alliances that spans the Atlantic and embraces data firms, thinktanks
and media outlets. It is about complicated corporate structures in
obscure jurisdictions, involving offshore funds funnelled through the
black-box algorithms of the platform tech monopolists. That it’s
eye-wateringly complicated and geographically diffuse is not a
coincidence. Confusion is the charlatan’s friend, noise its accessory.
The babble on Twitter is a convenient cloak of darkness.
Yet it’s also quite simple. In a well-functioning democracy, a
well-functioning press and a well-functioning parliament would help a
well-functioning judiciary do its job. Britain is not that country.
There is a vacuum where questions should be, the committees, the
inquiries, the headlines on the TV bulletins. What was Nigel Farage
doing in the Ecuadorian embassy? More to the point: why has no public
official asked him? Why is he giving speeches – for money – in the US?
Who’s paying him? I know this because my weirdest new hobby of 2017 is
to Harry Arron Banks, the Bristol businessman who was Ukip and Leave.
EU’s main funder, and Andy Wigmore, Leave. EU’s comms man and Belize’s
trade attache to the US, across the Internet late at night. Wigmore told
me about this new US venture – an offshore-based political consultancy
working on Steve Bannon-related projects – in a series of tweets. Is it
true? Who knows? Leave. EU has learned from its Trumpian friends that
black is white and white is black and these half-facts are a convenient
way of diffusing scandal and obscuring truth.
What on earth was Farage doing advancing Calexit – Californian Brexit?
And why did I find a photo of him hanging out with Dana Rohrabacher, the
Californian known in the US press as “Putin’s favourite congressman”?
The same Dana Rohrabacher who’s met with Don Trump Jr’s Russian lawyer
and – wait for it – also visited Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian
embassy. And who is now interceding on his behalf to obtain a pardon
from Don Trump Junior’s dad.
(You got this? Farage visited Trump, then Assange, then Rohrabacher.
Rohrabacher met Don Trump’s Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya. Then
Assange. And is now trying to close the circle with Trump.)
In these post-truth times, journalists are fighting the equivalent of a
firestorm with a bottle of water and a wet hankie. We desperately need
help. We need public pressure. We need parliament to step up and start
asking proper questions. There may be innocent answers to all these
questions. Let’s please just ask them. – Guardian News and Media
Donald Trump, Julian Assange Nigel Farage