been asked to go and testify. they are looking at facebook with they re strongly looking at facebook. there are other things that we need to look at and that is whether or not any election laws were broken in the united states, the federal election commission, are they looking into this? well, i think they should, the parent company in the uk was set up scl. scl, so the people working at scl who then transferred over to cambridge analytica to launch that u.s. branch of the company, they re really the same people working together. they did hire a group of americans to work on the ground, but this is essentially a uk company. all right, this will be interesting to continue to follow. it is a complicated story, thanks for the reporting you re doing on this. anna scheckter is with nbc news s investigative unit. the big question is how
cambridge analytica, scl, were never supposed to be part of the equation. as soon as facebook found out they were, as soon as they were alerted by the media, they told cambridge, told scl and the researcher, get rid of this d a data. what the new reporting is suggesting is that didn t necessarily happen. they still have it, don t they? the trump people have the 50 million people s profiles. i want to be clear, the trump campaign says that during the campaign, they were working with republican national committee data. they had cambridge analytica data analysts in their office, but the data that those analysts were crunching was from the republican national committee. but the speculation is that cambridge, or scl, still has that data. give me one example of how you would find a trump voter through the facebook information, data we re talking about. give me what indicator would say this is a trump voter. well, i mean, for instance, you get access to what people like. maybe they re
however, in 2013-2014, there was a new company set up, a kind of spin-off from scl which was cambridge analytica. now it was funded in large part by robert mercer, the kind of mega donor, republican mega donor. steve bannon was involved at that very early stage and alexander nix is the ceo. and now your investigation, i mean this is alexander nix being approached by someone he thinks is a possible client who is going to want to get people elected i think in sri lanka, is that correct? yes, that s right. and what kinds of things does he say he is willing to do, or that they have done in the past? so the setup, chris, i think it s important to understand, our operatives, if you like, a glamorous word, posed as representatives of a sri lankan family who wanted cambridge analytica s help to win elections in sri lanka. they were looking for a sales pitch from cambridge analytica, and that s what they got. initially there were four meetings. in the first few meetings it was
however, in 2013-2014, there was a new company set up, a kind of spin-off from scl which was cambridge analytica. now it was funded in large part by robert mercer, the kind of mega donor, republican mega donor. steve bannon was involved at that very early stage and alexander nix is the ceo. and now your investigation, i mean this is alexander nix being approached by someone he thinks is a possible client who is going to want to get people elected i think in sri lanka, is that correct? yes, that s right. and what kinds of things does he say he is willing to do, or that they have done in the past? so the setup, chris, i think it s important to understand, our operatives, if you like, a glamorous word, posed as representatives of a havesri la family who wanted cambridge analytica s help to win elections in sri lanka. they were looking for a sales pitch from cambridge analytica, and that s what they got. initially there were four meetings. in the first few meetings it was
have you met mr. trump? many times. you have? all the data, all the an lit ticks, all the television, and i basically formed stratehis stra. cambridge analyitca never claimed it won the election for president trump. now this is a complicated story, you want to statake a closer lo at the timeline of it all. it begins in 2013, it began when publish behavioral science company scl group. he financed a $1.5 million pilot group led by scl elections director alexander knicks and that company would later become.