By Dan Murphy
The small community of Yorktown Heights in northern Westchester has been home to several famous residents. Rock Star Dave Matthews and Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez have attended the Yorktown schools and lived in Yorktown.
Two of the other lesser-known, but just as influential Yorktown alums are Rebekah Mercer and her billionaire father Robert Mercer, who both called Yorktown home for more than a decade. Robert Mercer worked at the IBM Watson campus on the Yorktown border and has donated multi-millions to conservative causes. Robert Mercer used his computer science background from IBM at the hedgefund Renaissance Technologies to make his fortune
Rebekah Mercer, who graduated from Yorktown High School in 1990 has become the public face for the Mercer family, appearing at republicans and conservative functions and causes, and attending the inauguration of President Donald Trump.
One of the many companies and causes that received some of the Mercers’ financial capital was Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics firm that has become the center of a three-year investigation into the election of Trump in 2016, and the posting of Facebook ads to target and influence voters in the swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
While The Mueller Report and other congressional investigative committees point the finger at Russia for its interference in the presidential election of 2016, the more influential interference may have come from Cambridge Analytica, according to Guardian reporter Carole Cadwallader.
“The data analytics firm that worked with Donald Trump’s election team and the winning Brexit campaign harvested millions of Facebook profiles of U.S. voters, in one of the tech giant’s biggest ever data breaches, and used them to build a powerful software program to predict and influence choices at the ballot box,” wrote Cadwalladr.
“A whistleblower has revealed to the Observer how Cambridge Analytica – a company owned by the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, and headed at the time by Trump’s key adviser Steve Bannon – used personal information taken without authorization in early 2014 to build a system that could profile individual U.S. voters, in order to target them with personalized political advertisements,” continued Cadwalladr.
“Christopher Wylie, who worked with a Cambridge University academic to obtain the data, told the Observer: ‘We exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people’s profiles. And built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons. That was the basis the entire company was built on.’
“Documents seen by the Observer, and confirmed by a Facebook statement, show that by late 2015, the company had found out that information had been harvested on an unprecedented scale. However, at the time it failed to alert users and took only limited steps to recover and secure the private information of more than 50 million individuals.”
A recent Netflix documentary on Cambridge Analytica called “The Great Hack” is worth your viewing, because it sheds light – with the help of Cadwalladr – on how the Brexit vote, also in 2016 and before our presidential election, was used as a test run for Cambridge Analytica’s Facebook data operation, and how they “harvested and weaponized” data on Facebook users to target them and get them to vote for Britain to exit the European Union, and then later in 2016 to use the same tactics and data to target American voters.
For those who have lived in Westchester for many years, the name Mike Edelman may sound familiar. Edelman, a republican political consultant in Westchester for decades, helped elect Jeanine Pirro and other republicans in the 1900s and early 2000s.
He now lives in Florida, but frequently calls into former Journal News reporter Phil Reisman’s VWOX 1460 AM radio show. Edelman, one of the many “never Trump” republicans, has an interesting take on what happened in the presidential election of 2016.
“It’s mathematically not probable that the Russian meddling effort did not elect Trump,” wrote Edelman. “There were two simultaneous efforts going on, which the Trump campaign assisted. One was a systematic and sweeping effort to influence voters by flooding social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter with 180 million negative Clinton posts designed to discourage voters from voting democratic, either by staying home or voting for Trump.
“These posts were micro-targeted to swing state voters. When Paul Manafort (Trump campaign chairman) gave Konstantin Kilimnik (Ukraine-Russian political consultant) 70 pages of internal polling data, the Russians were able to aim their misinformation campaign at Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. There were 125 million views of those false posts among swing voters.
“Considering those states were won by trump by less than1 percent, or 80,000 votes in total across those three states, it is pretty obvious that those 185,000 million posts had to have moved 41,000 voters,” wrote Edelman.
“Simultaneously, the Russians Hacked the DNC emails and released them through Wikileaks, with the intent to disrupt the election and help Donald Trump. Roger Stone was aware of the Wikileaks effort and the campaign willingly accepted their help, including Trump himself.”
On WVOX with Reisman, Edelman said that in 45 years as a republican, he called every presidential election correctly except for 2016, because, “There was nobody who could foresee that Russia was so deeply involved in attempting to leverage the election for Trump. He had outside help – he had outside help and he won’t have it again. Nobody wants Russian to determine who wins our elections.”
Cadwalladr also attempts to link the Russians to what Cambridge Analytica was doing in the Brexit vote and the Trump vote, and makes a circumstantial case but with no smoking gun. Edelman added, “I am quite familiar with how Cambridge Analytics used to elect Trump through Russian bots and trolls in St Petersberg when Manafort gave Kilimnik 70 pages of polling internals.” The Mercers’
The Mercers’ connection to Steve Bannon, who some believe helped orchestrate Trump’s election, ended when Bannon left the White House and wrote a negative account of Trump in a book.
“I support President Trump and the platform upon which he was elected,” said Rebekah Mercer. “My family and I have not communicated with Steve Bannon in many months and have provided no financial support to his political agenda, nor do we support his recent actions and statements.”
Trump appreciated the Mercers’ breaking their ties with Bannon, Tweeting, “The Mercer family recently dumped the leaker known as Sloppy Steve Bannon, smart!”
The Mercers have also delved into local and state politics, including donating $1 million to a SuperPAC for former Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino, and by starting up an organization called ReclaimNY, which attempted to inform New Yorkers about how to stand up against taxes, corruption and failed policies in the state. Bannon also served on Reclaim, which shut down most of its operations last year.
The Mercers also helped fund Breitbart News with an investment of $10 million, and Rebekah served on the executive committee for then-President-elect Trump’s transition team. Robert Mercer was among the largest contributors to Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Rebekah Mercer, who was once described as one the most prominent women in republican politics, was not as well known in Yorktown High School then as younger sister, Heather, who played on the boys’ football team kicking field goals, and then sued Duke University for discrimination when she attempted to play for that school’s men’s football team.
The question that many are asking is: What will happen in the presidential election of 2020? Will the Russians try to do it again? Will China try to work against Trump? And what will the next piece of our ever changing technological world will the Mercers, or others use to help re-elect President Trump?
Editor’s note: The Mercers have not been charged with any crimes for any of their activity during the 2016 campaign. Nor has Steve Bannon.
