A super PAC run by incoming Trump national security adviser John Bolton was an early customer of Cambridge Analytica and benefited from the Facebook data that the political consulting firm obtained from a third-party app, The New York Times reported Friday.
Campaign finance records show that The John Bolton Super PAC paid Cambridge Analytica more than $1.15 million starting in 2014, after the firm reportedly obtained data from 50 million Facebook users without their knowledge.
The Times obtained the contract for the work Cambridge Analytica did for Bolton’s PAC, which included “behavioral microtargeting with psychographic messaging.” Cambridge Analytica went on to work for President Trump’s campaign.
{mosads}Christopher Wylie, a researcher who helped found Cambridge Analytica and has since become a whistleblower, told the Times that work involved using the data at the center of the new scandal.
“The data and modeling Bolton’s PAC received was derived from the Facebook data,” Wylie said. “We definitely told them about how we were doing it. We talked about it in conference calls, in meetings.”
According to the report, Cambridge Analytica used the data to figure out how best to promote Bolton’s hawkish foreign policy message to voters. Bolton became so close to the firm that it even helped him craft talking points, the Times reported.
Cambridge Analytica has denied any wrongdoing in obtaining the data. Facebook has promised to audit the firm to ensure the information was destroyed.
The firm helped design and target ads that the PAC funded for candidates such as Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), whose campaign committee was also a Cambridge Analytica patron, finance records show.