Facebook should be treated like a crime scene.

[deminks]

https://www.justsecurity.org/45135/facebook-crack-trump-russia-case/

Facebook should be treated like a crime scene. The social media company likely has troves of data that could provide critical leads for the investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

The effort to investigate possible coordination between the Trump team and Russia has so far centered on the growing number of meetings and interactions between the campaign and Kremlin-linked figures. These meetings already tell us a lot about intent. For instance, with the revelation of the June 9 meeting at Trump Tower between Donald Trump Jr.; Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law; Paul Manafort, the chairman of the Trump campaign at the time, and a handful of Russians with various ties to the Kremlin, we now know that at the very least the Trump campaign at the highest levels were interested in working with the Russians during the election. And likewise, from the Jan. 6 Intelligence Community report, we know that Russians also wanted to help elect Donald Trump and effectively set up a campaign to do so. This meant there were essentially two campaigns to elect Trump president in 2016: the Trump campaign and the Russian campaign.

(snip)

But the most direct way a foreign power could help a campaign is through giving money. Campaigns always need more money, usually to buy more ads. While the Russians could have laundered money to the campaign – indeed Christopher Steele alleges this in his infamous dossier – they could have also just covertly bought campaign ads themselves using a front group or proxy. But this does create a problem. Buying television ads leaves a trail. But buying ads on Facebook, as we are all finding out, might not.

This is why the admission by Facebook that Russians bought ads on their platform has raised a whole host of questions about the scale and depth of Russian interference. It also points to a potential nexus for collusion between the two campaigns.

Where the Clinton campaign emphasized traditional media, the Trump campaign focused on Facebook. The social media platform was central to its campaign strategy and they used Facebook in ways that were truly innovative for political campaigns. More people worked in San Antonio on the Trump digital team than worked on the campaign at Trump Tower. Weeks before the election Bloomberg provided an inside account of Trump’s digital campaign, explaining that “Cambridge Analytica’s statistical models isolated likely supporters whom (Brad) Parscale (digital director of the Trump campaign) bombarded with ads on Facebook.” The Trump campaign hired tech companies who “ultimately generated 100,000 distinct pieces of creative content,” often deploying this content in “dark-post” ads visible just to those select individuals. This is why the congressional investigations have been so interested in Trump’s digital team, which was overseen by Kushner and run by Parscale – both of whom have been interviewed by the committees.

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[ladjf]

1. Most definitely. nt