[14] former Conservative minister and MP Sir Geoffrey Pattie was the founding chairman of SCL; Lord Ivar Mountbatten also joined Oakes as a director of the company.

[29] Shortly afterwards, Channel 4 News aired undercover investigative videos showing Nix boasting about using prostitutes, bribery sting operations, and honey traps to discredit politicians on whom it had conducted opposition research, and saying that the company "ran all of (Donald Trump's) digital campaign".

[46] In 2020, the British Information Commissioner's Office closed a three-year inquiry into the company, concluded that Cambridge Analytica was "not involved" in the 2016 Brexit referendum and found no additional evidence for Russia's alleged interference during the campaign.

[47] US sensitive polling and election data, however, were passed to Russian Intelligence via a Cambridge Analytica contractor Sam Patten and Konstantin Kilimnik, who was indicted during the affair.

[48] Publicly, parent company SCL Group called itself a "global election management agency",[49] Politico reported it was known for involvement "in military disinformation campaigns to social media branding and voter targeting".

[53] Bannon's stake in the company was estimated at 1 to 5 million dollars, but he divested his holdings in April 2017 as required by his role as White House Chief Strategist.

'[50] During the revelations she published evidence through the British Parliament's Fake News Inquiry indicating that Cambridge Analytica did work for the UK's LeaveEU Brexit campaign during the 2016 EU Referendum which they denied.

[59][60] The Information Commissioner's Office decided in February 2019 to audit the campaign, and its funder Arron Banks company Eldon Insurance for unlawful marketing involving repurposing of data.

[61] In November 2020, the Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham wrote that she "found no further evidence to change [her] earlier view that SCL/CA were not involved in the EU referendum campaign in the UK."

[71][72][73] A firm called Emic, set up by staff from the original SCL defence contractor were revealed in 2020 by Emma Briant to be continuing to work for governments.

[11] In December 2022, Facebook's owner Meta Platforms agreed to pay $725 million to settle a class-action lawsuit that alleged the company improperly shared users' information with Cambridge Analytica.

[80] Whether it is our Facebook profile, Tweets, Google searches or GPS sensor, our digital footprints create extensive records of our personal habits and preferences.

Nix's statements in the recorded video describe how the Trump campaign itself could "take the high road" and "stay clean", while the negative attacks were handled by the firm and the Super PAC, in a way which makes it "unattributable, untrackable".

[110] On 26 March, the US Federal Trade Commission announced it is "conducting an open investigation of Facebook Inc's privacy practices following the disclosure that 50 million users' data got into the hands of political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.

[116] Cambridge Analytica's managing director of political operations said in a video recorded by Channel 4 that "We've done it in Mexico, we've done it in Malaysia, we're now moving into Brazil, Australia, China.

[139] In its Disinformation and 'fake news' inquiry, published on 29 July 2018, the UK Parliament's Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee noted that it is believed that CA, or its associated companies, worked with the Labour Party in Malta, on the 2013 Maltese general election campaign.

[140] Several sources claim that CA had close relationships with Henley & Partners who would immediately after the election introduce and run a lucrative Citizenship by Investment Program in Malta.

[144] The Final Report by the UK Parliament's Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, published on 18 February 2019, took note of the Maltese Government's submissions (including through PR agency Chelgate's services) but determined that compelling evidence shown to the Committee confirmed that "SCL certainly had meetings in Malta, that Christian Kalin of Henley & Partners was introduced by SCL to Joseph Muscat in 2011, and that Christian Kalin met with both political parties before 2013".

[161] Laurence Levy, a lawyer with the law firm Bracewell & Giuliani, advises Rebekah Mercer, Steve Bannon, and Alexander Nix on the legality of their company, Cambridge Analytica, being involved in Elections in the United States.

[164] The company worked with the John Bolton Super PAC (political action committee) on a major digital and TV campaign focused on senate races in Arkansas, North Carolina and New Hampshire and helped turn out voters for the Republican Party candidates in those states.

Two of the Republican candidates backed by the Bolton Super PAC, Thom Tillis in North Carolina and Tom Cotton in Arkansas, won their Senate bids, while Scott Brown lost in New Hampshire.

The PAC ran 15 different TV advertisements each in North Carolina and Arkansas and 17 in New Hampshire, mostly online with some targeted directly to households using Dish Network and DirecTV.

The firm was credited for its role in identifying a sizeable cluster of North Carolinians who prioritised foreign affairs, which encouraged Tillis to shift the conversation from state-level debates over education policy to charges that incumbent Kay Hagan had failed to take ISIS's rise seriously.

[178][failed verification] The Trump campaign used Cambridge Analytica during the primaries and in the summer of 2016, because it was uncertain if the Republican National Committee would share voter data.

[186] On 4 August 2017, Michael Flynn, who is under investigation by US counterintelligence for his contacts with Russian officials, amended a public financial filing to reflect that he had served in an advisory role in an agreement with CA during the 2016 Trump campaign.

[191] Assange's tweet followed a story in The Daily Beast[192] alleging that Cambridge Analytica chief executive Alexander Nix had proposed a collaboration with Wikileaks to find the 33,000 emails that had been deleted from Clinton's private server.

CNN said it had been told by several unnamed sources[193] that Nix intended to turn the Clinton email archive released to the public by the State Department into a searchable database for the campaign or a pro-Trump political action committee.

On 14 December 2017, it was revealed that Robert Mueller had requested during the fall of 2017 that Cambridge Analytica turn over the emails of any of its employees who worked on the Trump campaign, as part of his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.

[196] Cambridge Analytica's executives said in 2018 that the company had worked in more than 200 elections around the world, including in India, Pakistan, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia (CA's website stated that it supported Prime Minister Najib Razak's Barisan Nasional coalition),[197] Colombia, Cyprus, Zambia, South Africa, Romania, Italy, Lithuania, Trinidad and Tobago, Nigeria (Nigeria's 2015 presidential election),[197] the Czech Republic, and Argentina.

[200] The SCL Group, Cambridge Analytica's parent company, claimed that it rebranded the politician's image to target voters who they found are swayed by qualities such as toughness and decisiveness.