The head of a data analytics firm that worked for President Trump’s 2016 campaign wanted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to help locate Hillary Clinton’s missing emails, according to a report Wednesday.
Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix reached out to Mr. Assange in an attempt to recover and release about 33,000 emails that were erased from Mrs. Clinton’s private email server from when she was secretary of state, the Daily Beast reported.
The missing emails were a frequent subject for Mr. Trump on the stump in 2016.
Contact between Mr. Nix and Mr. Assange would be the closest interaction between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks, which published Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign email believed to have been hacked by Russia.
The email hacks are at the center of Justice Department and congressional investigations in Russian melding in the election and allegations of Trump campaign collusion.
While not directly denying the charge, the Trump campaign said it relied exclusively on Republican National Committee data analytics.
“We as a campaign made the choice to rely on the voter data of the Republican National Committee to help elect President Donald J. Trump. Any claims that voter data from any other source played a key role in the victory are false,” said Michael S. Glassner, executive director of the Trump campaign.
He said the decision to partner with the RNC on data analytics was one of the most important decisions the campaign made after securing the 2016 nomination.
“Leading into the election, the RNC had invested in the most sophisticated data targeting program in modern American history, which helped secure our victory in the fall. We were proud to have worked with the RNC and its data experts and relied on them as our main source for data analytics,” said Mr. Glassner.
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
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