A data mining company that helped Donald Trump win the presidency is in early talks to snare two potentially lucrative new contracts, one to boost the incoming Trump White House’s policy messaging and the other to help the Trump Organization expand its sales, the Guardian has learned. Despite his apparent role in the talks as a representative of Trump’s incoming White House team, Bannon is also on the board of Cambridge Analytica, the source said, an assertion also reported elsewhere. The talks with the Trump Organization and Bannon underscore the rising influence of the reclusive Mercers as mega-donors on the right, and their tight ties to Trump’s inner circle. In September alone Cambridge was paid $5m by the Trump campaign for its services. Make America Number 1 paid Glittering Steel, a film company that Bannon heads which made an anti-Clinton film, $187,000 in October and November while Bannon served as Trump’s campaign CEO, unpaid.

Source: The Guardian November 23, 2016 17:20 UTC