Trump, Assange, Farage...an unholy alliance

Last Wednesday, 11 months into Donald Trump’s new world order, in thefirst year of normalisation, a sudden unblurring of lines took place. Ashift. A door of perception swung open.Because that was the day that the dramatis personae of two separateTrump-Russia scandals smashed headlong into one another. A high-speednews car crash between Cambridge Analytica and WikiLeaks, the twoorganisations that arguably had the most impact on 2016, coming togetherlast 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 contactedJulian Assange to ask him if he wanted “help” with WikiLeaks’s stash ofstolen e-mails.That’s the stash of stolen e-mails that had such a devastating impact onHillary Clinton in the last months of the campaign. And this storybrought WikiLeaks, which the head of the CIA describes as a “hostileintelligence service”, directly together with the Trump campaign forwhich Cambridge Analytica worked. This is an amazing plot twist for thecompany, owned by US billionaire Robert Mercer, which is already thesubject of investigations by the House intelligence committee, theSenate intelligence committee, the FBI and, it was announced late onFriday night, the Senate judiciary committee.So far, so American. These are US scandals involving US politics and thenews made the headlines in US bulletins across US networks.But it’s also Cambridge Analytica, the data analytics company, which hasits headquarters in central London and that, following a series ofarticles about its role in Brexit in the Guardian and the Observer, isalso being investigated, by the Electoral Commission and the InformationCommissioner’s Office. The company that was spun out of a Britishmilitary contractor, is headed by an old Etonian and that responded toour stories earlier this year by threatening to sue us. It’s ourCambridge it’s named after, not the American one, and it was here thatit processed the voter files of 240mn US citizens.It’s also here that this “hostile intelligence service” – WikiLeaks – isbased. The Ecuadorian embassy is just a few miles, as the crow flies,from Cambridge Analytica’s head office. Because this is not just aboutAmerica. It’s about Britain, too. This is transatlantic. It’s notpossible to separate Britain and the US in this whole sorry mess – and Isay this as someone who has spent months trying. Where we see this mostclearly is in that other weird WikiLeaks connection: Nigel Farage.Because that moment in March when Farage was caught tripping down thesteps of the Ecuadorian embassy was the last moment the lines suddenlybecame visible. That the ideological overlaps between WikiLeaks andTrump and Brexit were revealed to be not just lines, but a channel ofcommunication.Because if there’s one person who’s in the middle of all of this, butwho has escaped any proper scrutiny, it’s Nigel Farage. That’s NigelFarage, who led the Leave. EU campaign, which is being investigated bythe Electoral Commission alongside Cambridge Analytica, about whetherthe latter made an “impermissible donation” of services to the Leavecampaign. Nigel Farage who visited Donald Trump and then Julian Assange.Who is friends with Steve Bannon and Robert Mercer. Who headed anorganisation – Ukip – which has multiple, public, visible but almostentirely unreported Russian connections. Who is paid by the Russianstate via the broadcaster RT, which was banned last week from Twitter.And who appears like clockwork on British television without any word ofthis.This is a power network that involves WikiLeaks and Farage, andCambridge Analytica and Farage, and Robert Mercer and Farage. SteveBannon, former vice-president of Cambridge Analytica, and Farage. It’sNigel Farage and Brexit and Trump and Cambridge Analytica and WikiLeaks…and, if the Senate intelligence committee and the House intelligencecommittee and the FBI are on to anything at all, somewhere in the middleof all that, Russia.Try to follow this on a daily basis and it’s one long headspin: aspider’s web of relationships and networks of power and patronage andalliances that spans the Atlantic and embraces data firms, thinktanksand media outlets. It is about complicated corporate structures inobscure jurisdictions, involving offshore funds funnelled through theblack-box algorithms of the platform tech monopolists. That it’seye-wateringly complicated and geographically diffuse is not acoincidence. 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, awell-functioning press and a well-functioning parliament would help awell-functioning judiciary do its job. Britain is not that country.There is a vacuum where questions should be, the committees, theinquiries, the headlines on the TV bulletins. What was Nigel Faragedoing in the Ecuadorian embassy? More to the point: why has no publicofficial 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 isto 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’strade attache to the US, across the Internet late at night. Wigmore toldme about this new US venture – an offshore-based political consultancyworking on Steve Bannon-related projects – in a series of tweets. Is ittrue? Who knows? Leave. EU has learned from its Trumpian friends thatblack is white and white is black and these half-facts are a convenientway 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, theCalifornian known in the US press as “Putin’s favourite congressman”?The same Dana Rohrabacher who’s met with Don Trump Jr’s Russian lawyerand – wait for it – also visited Julian Assange in the Ecuadorianembassy. And who is now interceding on his behalf to obtain a pardonfrom Don Trump Junior’s dad.(You got this? Farage visited Trump, then Assange, then Rohrabacher.Rohrabacher met Don Trump’s Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya. ThenAssange. And is now trying to close the circle with Trump.)In these post-truth times, journalists are fighting the equivalent of afirestorm with a bottle of water and a wet hankie. We desperately needhelp. We need public pressure. We need parliament to step up and startasking proper questions. There may be innocent answers to all thesequestions. Let’s please just ask them. – Guardian News and Media