As the conservative Tory government of the United Kingdom appears to be collapsing shortly before President Donald Trump's first visit to Britain, a whistleblower at the center of investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign is sounding the alarms that the same tactics were used by President Vladimir Putin to sow political instability on both sides of the Atlantic.
On Monday, UK foreign minister Boris Johnson joined Brexit Secretary David Davis in resigning from the cabinet of Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May.
Whistleblower Christopher Wylie, who worked for SCL, the England-based parent company of Cambridge Analytica, reminded of the impropriety that caused him to come forward.
Wylie has been seeking to draw the connections between the Brexit campaign and Russian meddling. Wylie has also testified in all four U.S. federal investigations into Facebook.
“The company learned that there were segments of the population that responded to messages like ‘drain the swamp’ or images of border walls or indeed paranoia about the ‘deep state’ that weren’t necessarily reflected in mainstream polling or mainstream political discourse that Steve Bannon was interested in to help build his movement,” Wylie told the Senate Judiciary Committee in May.
Wylie told NBC News that Cambridge Analytica was meeting with future campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and chief strategist Steve Bannon in 2015, prior to the start of the Trump campaign.
Wylie suggested that billionaire Robert Mercer was using Cambridge Analytica to illegally funnel money to the U.K. Independence Party during the Brexit campaign.
“You have to remember,” Wylie testified before a British parliamentary committee, “part of the brilliance of Cambridge Analytica is it doesn’t need to make money because it’s Robert Mercer’s project. Robert Mercer is a billionaire. He doesn’t need to make money.”
“If you, as an investor of a company, put money into that company, that’s not classed as a political donation,” he explained. “You can continue to invest purposefully in a company so that it can also work for particular entities at a subsidized rate or, indeed, in some cases for free.”
National Security Advisor John Bolton's super PAC also utilized Cambridge Analytica.
Wylie has also testified before the Canadian Parliament on Brexit.
"To the Americans, a discernible pattern of behaviour occurred during Brexit. Foreign contractors outside the jurisdiction of domestic authorities were used to manage major aspects of the campaign," Wylie explained. "The Americans want to understand what happened in the UK because similar operations appear to have occurred in their own elections."
"Together with two other whistleblowers, I reported Vote Leave to the Electoral Commission, the Information Commissioner’s Office and Metropolitan Police for breaches of electoral and data protection law," he continued. "I reported Leave.EU’s dealings with the Russian embassy to the National Crime Agency and intelligence services."
"Cheating is banned in elections because it creates undue influence on the electorate," Wylie noted. "If there are no consequences, why would any future campaign bother following the law?"
Watch Wylie testify to parliament in March: