The Mueller report just keeps looking worse for Donald Trump
Since Robert Mueller submitted his still-secret report, we’ve had a number of people come out of the woodwork, intimating that the report is far worse than the Trump White House is making it out to be. It’s also noteworthy that while the Trump White House has claimed total exoneration, they aren’t particularly interested in releasing the report that supposedly exonerates them, or even recognizing Russia as a legitimate threat and addressing what they should be doing to prevent future election meddling – the sort of things an innocent person facing these kinds of accusations would do.
While legal experts and leaks from the Department of Justice have made up the majority of these anonymous sources, one named individual has broken his silence – a former employee of Cambridge Analytica who’s also something of a big deal. He was recruited in 2016 by Trump’s former campaign CEO, Steve Bannon.
Christopher Wylie, whose revelations as a whistleblower led to the collapse of the infamous Cambridge Analytica data firm last year, noticed a few inconsistencies right off the bat and let them be known on Twitter: “Whatever this report says, here’s what I know: when I was at Cambridge Analytica, the company hired known Russian agents, had data researchers in St Petersburg, tested US voter opinion on Putin’s leadership, and hired hackers from Russia – all while Bannon was in charge.”
Russian “fake news” operations have been running since well before Putin – they were used effectively in the former Soviet Union since they don’t require much of a defense budget and can destabilize governments without firing a shot. Steve Bannon may be gone from the White House, and Cambridge Analytica itself may be gone, but Bannon is very much active on the political scene, promoting the same xenophobic far-right political candidates throughout Europe that benefit Putin and his oligarchs. The longer the Trump administration keeps the Mueller report a secret, the worse this is looking – the leaks are coming fast, and don’t show any indication of stopping.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making