Trump-Tied British Data Firm Offered $1.4 Million Bribe for Election Win

The parent group of Cambridge Analytica, SCL group, a political consulting company with close ties to the 2016 Trump campaign and founded by Steve Bannon and top GOP donor Robert Mercer, is embroiled in a bribery scandal for offering a $1.4 million sum to ensure an election win for the UK’s Labour party.

Cambridge Analytica is also the company at the center of an intense Facebook data scandal, wherein the company is said to have obtained the private data from tens of millions profiles from an outside researcher, violating the terms of its agreement with the platform. It then used this data to predict voting behavior.

What’s more, the company has been caught on tape bragging about playing a part in Trump’s election win. (I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the client.) The Trump campaign allegedly paid the company over $5 million for services rendered during the 2016 election.

Back in 2010, Lindsay Grant led the People’s Action Movement in the election, but lost to Prime Minister Denzil Douglas of the incumbed labor party. The election was reportedly the subject of many irregularities. Now, The Times has reported that SCL group, of whom the Labour Party was a client, entrapped Grant with the bribe.

Cambridge Analytica’s CEO, Alexander Nix, denies any such behavior, even though the man was previously caught on tape offering to pay politicians off with bribes and sex workers. He was suspended from the company on Tuesday. The former CEO had also been found to use racial slurs when referring to black clients over email. Classy.