- The ranking members of the House Oversight and Judiciary committees want to subpoena two of the data firms hired by President Donald Trump's campaign team for documents related to Russia's election interference.
- The firms: Cambridge Analytica and Giles-Parscale.
- Cambridge Analytica and Giles-Parscale have not denied that they had contact with foreign actors during the campaign, the Democrats wrote, but
- they have failed to turn over documents requested by the committees in October.
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Democrats want to know more about a strange omission from the Trump campaign's digital director about his foreign contacts
The ranking members of the House Oversight and Judiciary committees want to subpoena two of the data firms hired by President Donald Trump's campaign.
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The ranking members of the House Oversight and Judiciary committees want to subpoena two of the data firms hired by President Donald Trump's campaign team for documents related to their potential engagement with foreign actors like Russia and WikiLeaks during the election.
Reps. Elijah Cummings and Jerry Nadler sent a letter to Cambridge Analytica's CEO Alexander Nix and Giles-Parscale cofounder Brad Parscale — who also served as the Trump campaign's digital director — in October. The letter asked whether their firms received "information from a foreign government or foreign actor" at any point during the election.
The letter was also sent to the heads of Deep Root Analytics, TargetPoint Consulting, and The Data Trust, which were among the outfits hired by the Republican National Committee to bolster the Trump campaign's data operation.
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Whereas Deep Root, TargetPoint, and The Data Trust responded to the documents request, Cambridge Analytica did not. Parscale's response, moreover, was insufficient, the Democrats said.
"As I made clear in the 60 Minutes interview cited in your letter, I share your concerns and would not want foreign governments meddling in our elections," Parscale wrote, referring to his interview with CBS earlier this year about Russia's election interference. "But as I stated in that same interview, I do not have any firsthand knowledge of foreign interference in the 2016 election."
He added: "I respectfully decline to make document productions and respond to inquiries that are duplicative" of the work being done by the congressional intelligence committees and special counsel Robert Mueller."
Parscale's letter mirrored those written by the RNC data firms and used virtually the same language — with one notable exception. Whereas the firms' letters included a line denying that they had had contact with any "foreign government or foreign actor," Parscale's did not.
"Giles-Parscale and Cambridge Analytica did not deny that they had contacts or communications with foreign governments or foreign actors during the 2016 campaign," Cummings and Nadler wrote in a letter on Thursday to House Oversight Chair Trey Gowdy and House Judiciary Chair Bob Goodlatte.
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They continued:
"Because the first three companies have asserted unequivocally that none of their employees had contacts with any foreign agents during the presidential campaign, we are willing to delay any further inquiry unless or until evidence to the contrary emerges. However, neither Giles Parscale nor Cambridge Analytica have denied these contacts. We therefore request that our committees issue subpoenas to these companies to compel the production of the information they are withholding from Congress."
Parscale and Cambridge Analytica have come under the microscope as congressional investigators probe whether v
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