March 20, 2018

Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix Was Just Suspended

His removal came just as video emerged of him and another executive boasting about ties to the Trump campaign.

Cambridge Analytica, the data analytics firm deeply involved in President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, announced Tuesday that it has removed CEO Alexander Nix from the company. The suspension comes one day after Britain’s Channel 4 News published an explosive video from a months-long undercover investigation that captured the firm’s top executives discussing various ways it offered to entrap politicians, including using sex workers.

“Mr. Nix’s recent comments secretly recorded by Channel 4 and other allegations do not represent the values or operations of the firm and his suspension reflects the seriousness with which we view this violation,” Cambridge Analytica board members said in a statement Tuesday.

As Cambridge Analytica announced Nix’s departure, Channel 4 News published a second video Tuesday that showed Nix boasting about running all of the Trump campaign’s digital operations. He also admits to having personally met Trump.

“We did all the research, all the data, all the analytics, all the targeting, we ran all the digital campaign, the television campaign and our data informed all the strategy,” Nix is seen saying in the video.

Over the weekend, news reports also revealed how Cambridge Analytica secretly harvested private data from 50 million Facebook users.

The fallout from Channel 4’s reporting has been staggering, with Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg under intense fire for the data breach.

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