Robert Leroy Mercer (born July 11, 1946)[2] is an American hedge fund manager, computer scientist, and political donor.
[2][3][4] Mercer played a controversial role in the campaign for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union, led by Dominic Cummings, with £3.9 million being spent on his data analytics and machine learning company AggregateIQ.
[5] He has also been a major funder of organizations supporting right-wing political causes in the United States, such as Breitbart News,[6] the now-defunct Cambridge Analytica,[7] and Donald Trump's 2016 campaign for president.
[6] A bipartisan Senate panel estimated in 2014 that Medallion investors underpaid their taxes by some $6.8 billion over more than a decade by masking short-term gains as long-term returns.
[27] In 2010, he financially supported fringe biochemist[28] Art Robinson's unsuccessful efforts to unseat Peter DeFazio in Oregon's 4th congressional district.
[2] Mercer has donated to The Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Media Research Center, Reclaim New York, GAI, and Citizens for Self-Governance.
[6] He has also supported Doctors for Disaster Preparedness, Fred Kelly Grant (an Idaho activist who encourages legal challenges to environmental laws), a campaign for the death penalty in Nebraska, and funded ads in New York critical of the so-called "ground-zero mosque".
[6] According to associates interviewed by Bloomberg, Mercer is concerned with the monetary and banking systems of the United States, which he believes are in danger from government meddling.
Andy Wigmore, communications director of Leave.EU, said that Mercer donated the services of data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica to Nigel Farage, the head of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP).
The firm was able to advise Leave.EU through its ability to harvest data from people's Facebook profiles in order to target them with individualized persuasive messages to vote for Brexit.
[17] Mercer was a major financial supporter of the 2016 presidential campaign of Ted Cruz,[38] contributing $11 million to a super PAC associated with the candidate.
[8] Mercer and his daughter Rebekah helped to obtain senior roles in the Trump campaign for Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway.
[17] Mercer was portrayed by actor Aden Gillett in the 2019 HBO and Channel 4 produced drama entitled Brexit: The Uncivil War.
He has acquired one of the country's largest collections of machine guns and historical firearms, including a weapon Arnold Schwarzenegger wielded in The Terminator.