The president has proven that he’s committed to gaining and holding onto power to the point of having filed for re-election before any other modern president. Unlike other modern presidents, he chose to hold an array of what amounts to campaign rallies during his first year on the job.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lhOxUMzOQo
The activities the president’s team engaged in to get the belligerent businessman to the Oval Office get more striking and out of place than that, however.
As is well known by now, the Trump campaign cooperated during the president’s rise to power with a data firm called Cambridge Analytica, which has come under fire for reportedly harvesting the Facebook data of tens of millions of users without those users’ knowledge. A super PAC controlled by the man Trump just recently announced as his new national security adviser, John Bolton, operated in the same way.
The secretive data usage isn’t the only place where Cambridge Analytica operations have run afoul of concerned interests and possibly the law; the firm also allegedly violated the U.S. law forbidding foreigners from working in our elections through having foreign nationals consult for U.S. Republican campaigns.
In the face of these issues, two watchdog groups have now filed a criminal complaint demanding to know what the Trump campaign and Bolton super PAC knew and when. The groups allege that the campaign and super PAC violated U.S. election law through their cooperation with Cambridge Analytica.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington’s Executive Director Noah Bookbinder commented:
‘The law prohibits foreign nationals from participating, directly or indirectly, in elections in the United States. What’s worse than the fact that it apparently happened in this case is that the people involved apparently knew they were breaking the law and continued to do so anyway. These are very serious apparent violations of federal law. The Justice Department and the FBI should immediately commence an investigation into this matter and take appropriate action.’
As he explains it, Steve Bannon, who worked on the Cambridge Analytica team before joining the Trump campaign, knew that what the firm was doing was likely illegal but did nothing to stop it anyway. He and the firm itself are also named in the lawsuit.
Featured image via Getty/Bloomberg
