Senator Richard Blumenthal claimed on Thursday that it is “significant” that a data research firm related to the Trump campaign allegedly tried to connect with the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange during the 2016 elections, The Hill reports.
“It is significant because it demonstrates evidence of potential collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian interference,” Blumenthal said in an interview with CNN.
“Here we have more evidence of a pattern that has been established of collusion and perhaps of obstruction of justice,” Blumenthal proceeded, referring to the president’s constant claims that probes into alleged collusion are a “hoax.”
Blumenthal made comments on this issue after The Daily Beast reported Wednesday that the head of Cambridge Analytica, which was tied to the Trump campaign, reached out to Assange about finding former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s missing emails.
Assange wrote a tweet Wednesday confirming that the firm reached out to WikiLeaks.
Representative Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Representative John Conyers Jr., the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, issued an announcement on Thursday that they wrote a letter to several former consultants for the Trump campaign to investigate whether they colluded with Russia in its attempts to influence the election.
Cambridge Analytica is among the companies that are mentioned in their letter, as well as Giles-Parscale, TargetPoint Consulting, The Data Trust and Deep Root Analytics.
“As we assess legislation that addresses whether American businesses directly engaged with known hostile foreign actors such as Wikileaks, cooperated with foreign governments, or used misappropriated data, it is important we understand what happened,” Cummings and Conyers said in the letter.
The Trump campaign operation appeared to distance itself from the data mining company Wednesday after it was reported that its leader reached out to Assange. Trump campaign aide Michael Glassner stated that the 2016 campaign was based on the Republican National Committee (RNC) and its data experts “as our main source for data analytics.”
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