Rachel Maddow sank incoming National Security Adviser John Bolton on Wednesday, pinning him to the ongoing Cambridge Analytica-Facebook scandal.
Maddow skewered Bolton – citing internal documents from the Trump-linked firm – for having his fingerprints all over Cambridge Analytica’s stolen Facebook data, which was used to help Trump and other Republican candidates during the 2016 election.
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Rachel Maddow pins John Bolton directly to the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook scandal #Maddow pic.twitter.com/0XX7R2pNuh
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Maddow said:
So among the internal Cambridge Analytica documents that were taken by this whistleblower and handed over to the British parliament, among those documents is a whole big section of communications, internal communications, at Cambridge Analytica about the Bolton project and the Bolton data and meetings with the Bolton people. That’s all about John Bolton, whose super PAC was mega-funded to the tune of multi-million donations from Trump donor Robert Mercer. And then what John Bolton’s PAC did with Robert Mercer’s donations is that he turned around and in large part, he spent those dollars with Robert Mercer’s company, with Cambridge Analytica, which was, at the time, testing out its new techniques about how they were going to use all these tens of millions of stolen data files from American Facebook users and turn them around and use them in an American election on behalf of Republican candidates.
Bolton’s job is already at risk
Before even officially assuming the position of Trump’s National Security Adviser, Bolton is already at risk of losing his job.
As Maddow also pointed out on Wednesday, citing a new CNBC report, Bolton is currently meeting with White House lawyers “over possible conflicts of interest.”
The “sticking point” for Bolton, according to the report, is how Bolton’s role with political action committees could “be a cause for concern.”
Based on the flurry of news reports coming out about Bolton’s past, it’s becoming increasingly clear that his position as incoming NSA is tenuous at best.
His connection to the already-brewing Cambridge Analytica-Facebook scandal is even more reason for Bolton to worry. As The New York Times pointed out just today, the number of Facebook users improperly targeted stands at 87 million – “much higher” than initially reported.
The Times reported: “Facebook on Wednesday said that the data of up to 87 million users may have been improperly shared with a political consulting firm connected to President Trump during the 2016 election — a figure far higher than the estimate of 50 million that had been widely cited since the leak was reported last month.”
Just based on his disturbing worldview, John Bolton has no business shaping American foreign policy. But his involvement with Cambridge Analytica’s improper data harvesting during the 2016 election – that’s just another reason to shut him out of the White House for good.
Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
