Wendy Siegelman — charts, articles, quotes, videos, etc.
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Below are links to articles and charts published on Medium and in The Daily Beast, The Guardian, Byline Times and Buzzfeed. My reporting has been cited by NBC News, Salon, Intelligence Online, Jackson Free Press, The New York Review of Books, Fast Company, Washington Monthly, The Times of Israel, Forbes, The Washington Post, BBC, Newsweek, USA Today and is cited in Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance’s Appellate Brief related to Trump’s tax returns and the U.S. Senate Intelligence committee report on Russian Active Measures, Campaigns and Interference in the 2016 U.S. Election (see links below).
Publication Quotes and References:
NBC News — January 12, 2021
Deutsche Bank and Signature Bank cut future ties with Trump, citing Capitol riots
Ladder Capital, a small real estate investment trust that specializes in riskier debt that many other banks avoid, has issued Trump millions of dollars in loans for four of his New York properties.
Financial records filed with the New York Department of Finance show four loans to Trump by Ladder Capital for an estimated $282 million: $160 million for 40 Wall Street, $100 million for Trump Tower, $15 million for Trump Plaza, and $7 million for Trump International Hotel & Tower.
The loans were uncovered and first reported on by Wendy Siegelman, an independent reporter who has written for the Guardian and Buzzfeed.
Manhattan DA Cy Vance Appellate Brief — September 21, 2020
Appellate Brief related to subpoena for Trump’s tax returns and financials from Mazars as part of a criminal tax fraud investigation
Salon — September 16, 2020
Invisible company owned by Rudy Giuliani got taxpayer-backed PPP money — but where did it go?
A payroll company owned by Rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s personal attorney, took between $150,000 and $350,000 in taxpayer-backed emergency small business loans this spring. It’s unclear what Giuliani did with the money…Independent journalist Wendy Siegelman appears to have been the first to report both the company and the loan.
Intelligence Online — September 2, 2020
China Dorian Barak joins dots between UAE, Israel, Beijing and Erik Prince
As noted by British journalist Wendy Siegelman on Twitter, Prince’s company and the Chinese group both invested in the Israeli startup Agent Vi
Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence U.S. Senate on Russian Active Measures, Campaigns and Interference in the 2016 U.S. Election — August 20, 2020
Footnotes 4386 and 4388 on page 679
Jackson Free Press — November 13, 2019
God Save the Governor: Phil Bryant, Brexit Soldier
Freelance journalists J.J. Patrick and Wendy Siegelman investigated the project, with Patrick reporting in Byline in November 2017 that Wigmore told him Big Data Dolphins was “already fully functional” and “based out of Bristol and Mississippi for insurance (and) financial services.” In 2018 testimony, Banks told the U.K. House of Commons that the UM project had been delayed and amounted to no more than “empty office space” with “no staff.”
The New York Review of Books, NYR Daily — August 27, 2019
Among the big investors in this shady netherworld of intelligence-gathering and influence operations, there are naturally many overlaps. Tchenguiz’s interests and investments connect with those of Erik Prince, as the freelance journalist Wendy Siegelman has shown in her fine-grained mapping of the field on Medium. Both men have links to one of the best-known private intelligence companies, Black Cube, founded in Israel by another former military intelligence officer. Tchenguiz was involved in setting up Black Cube and was its first major client. (Black Cube first came to widespread public attention when The New Yorker reported that its operatives were working for the former movie mogul Harvey Weinstein in an apparent effort to frustrate the newspaper’s reporting of allegations of sexual assault made against him.) Though Black Cube denies it, the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Chris Wiley has claimed the two companies did work together. The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz has reported that Prince also considered investing in a joint venture with Tchenguiz and the Israeli financier Dorian Barak.
Siegelman has also tracked the development of a new company named Emerdata, since its emergence in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica bankruptcy. Julian Wheatland and Alexander Nix were both initially directors, though since they’re now under investigation for their Cambridge Analytica activities, they’ve both had to resign. Robert Mercer’s daughters, Rebekah (who has worked closely with Steve Bannon) and the less high-profile Jennifer, are the major investors, alongside Prince’s billionaire business partner, Johnson Ko. (The Mercer sisters have also acquired their father’s stake in Breitbart, the far-right media outlet Bannon built up.) Emerdata is thus essentially a reincarnation of Cambridge Analytica, possibly with even more funding.
Fast Company — July 26, 2019
The strange afterlife of Cambridge Analytica and the mysterious fate of its data
The holding company now appears to be largely owned by conservative activist Rebekah Mercer and her sister Jennifer, whose shares are held in trust and via their U.S.-based Cambridge Analytica Holdings LLC, according to Cambridge’s bankruptcy filing in New York. The remaining fifth of Emerdata’s shares are owned by several prior SCL Group minority investors and a number of Hong Kong-based shell companies. Investigative journalist Wendy Siegelman first reported on Emerdata and its links to SCL last year.
Fast Company — March 22, 2019
The Mueller report: When and how we’re likely to see it
Independent journalist Wendy Siegelman has published a handy chart showing cases from the Special Counsel’s Office or related cases of high profile figures in the Trump-Russia investigation
The Guardian — October 13, 2018
Citizen journalists — the fighters on the frontline against Russia’s attacks
And when the firm threatened to sue the Guardian, it was the pioneering work of another open-source investigator, Wendy Siegelman, working with US journalist Ann Marlowe, who created a chart of its many complicated corporate structures that the Observer and Guardian’s lawyers drew upon in our response.
Washington Monthly — October 2, 2018
Will Erik Prince Ever Pay for Lying to Congress?
Wendy Siegelman does some amazing sleuthing on the financial aspects of the Russia controversy, but I have a hard time following all the shell companies and other shenanigans of the rich and famous. I think it definitely is worth looking at her reporting, including when it comes to former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince.
Having read through Siegelman’s work and other more mainstream articles, it appears to me that Prince gave false and misleading testimony on a wide range of topics, but the key issue that brought him before Congress was the meeting he had in the Seychelles in early pre-inauguration January 2016.
The Times of Israel — August 23,2018
Cambridge Analytica-linked businessman helped start Black Cube, lawsuit claims
The UK parliamentary committee cited a May 2017 chart created by investigative journalists Wendy Siegelman and Ann Marlowe that includes 30 companies interlinked within the SCL Group, but noted that the structure had since changed.
Forbes — August 2, 2018
From Cambridge Analytica’s Ashes, An Odd Pair Promises An ‘Ethical’ Startup
In July, his own past was called into question in a Medium post from independent journalist Wendy Siegelman, who linked Al Khatib to businesses in Russia and the U.A.E.. The report also made loose connections between Al Khatib and Erik Prince, the Trump-supporting entrepreneur who founded controversial private-mercenaries provider Blackwater. Prince is now wrapped up in Robert Mueller’s FBI investigation into Russian influence on the 2016 election over claims he travelled to the Seychelles to try to set up a backchannel between Trump and Russia. The Auspex cofounder simply brushed off any implications in Siegelman’s post. “None of the points the article is hinting towards are true,” he says in a WhatsApp
Fast Company — May 15, 2018
Revealed: Mystery $1M inaugural donation linked to Trump judicial advisor
The campaign report, filed by Jay Webber’s congressional campaign, was first highlighted by journalist Wendy Siegelman. Leo has been identified as the president of the BH Fund, a nonprofit that was given influence over hiring and admissions at George Mason University’s law school as part of an anonymous $20 million donation.
The Washington Post — May 3, 2018
What the life and death of Cambridge Analytica tells us about politics — and ourselves
Yet it’s not even clear that the people who created Cambridge Analytica are leaving this field. As freelance journalist Wendy Siegelman and Business Insider reported in March, two members of the Mercer family — major backers of conservative political causes whose money and management was key to Cambridge Analytica from the beginning — have joined the board of Emerdata.
BBC — May 3, 2018
Cambridge Analytica: Will data scandal firm return from the dead?
A New-York based investigative journalist has tracked other alleged links between SCL and Emerdata.
Wendy Siegelman told the BBC that she was particularly intrigued by Emerdata’s appointment of the Chinese businessman Johnson Chun Shun Ko as one of its directors in January.
Mr Ko had not previously been a director of either Cambridge Analytica or the SCL Group.
“He has a business partnership with Erik Prince, who plays a key role in the Trump-Russia investigation,” she said.
“And [President Trump’s former chief strategist] Steve Bannon has reportedly been a very close associate of Mr Prince.”
Mr Bannon co-founded Cambridge Analytica and recently said he had coined its name.
“I wonder if Bannon is still operating in the background even though he’s not a director,” added Ms Siegelman.
Newsweek — May 3, 2018
What is Emerdata? As Cambridge Analytica shuts, directors surface in new firm
Emerdata was first discovered by independent journalist Wendy Siegelman, who covered the new company back in March in a detailed blog post on Medium. Siegelman told Newsweek that the SCL Group had a “very complex corporate structure that on many levels seems designed to be opaque and confusing.”
“I had heard the report on Channel 4 News in late March that [SCL Group director] Nigel Oakes said it was his understanding that Emerdata was set up to acquire all of SCL and Cambridge Analytica but hadn’t expected a mass closure,” she added.
Snopes.com — May 3, 2018
Cambridge Analytica Shuts Down — But Key Figures Open New Firm
New York-based investigative journalist Wendy Siegelman, who first reported on of Emerdata, told us that some have expressed concern that closing some of the company’s operations could be an attempt to hinder access to data by investigators: “Investigators in the UK, US, and other countries are still trying to figure out where facebook data was used, including in the 2016 election, and without a review of SCL/CA’s computers, hard drives, databases, documents, etc, it’s not yet clear what they actually did historically.”
Shareblue Media — May 2, 2018
Trump’s shady data firm may be about to pull its biggest stunt yet
In August, the shady crew behind Cambridge Analytica and its parent company SCL Group set up a new company called Emerdata, which was first uncovered by journalist Wendy Siegelman earlier this year.
USA Today — March 22, 2018
Cambridge Analytica active in elections, big data projects for years
SCL, founded in 1993 by former Saatchi & Saatchi advertising executive Nigel Oakes, has operated at least 18 separate companies in Britain and 12 in the United States, according to corporate filings in Britain and the U.S. compiled by Wendy Siegelman and Ann Marlowe, independent researchers in New York, and verified by USA TODAY. Some of these companies are now dormant or dissolved.
Videos and Podcasts
Data, Ethics and Trust — October 19, 2018
Podcast with Dr Charles Kriel — One Year Anniversary Programme
The Dworkin Report — July 2, 2018
Seminars: Russian Propaganda Explained — May 21, 2018
Cambridge Analytica: Facts vs Theory Interview with Wendy Siegelman with Zarina Zabrisky
AFP News Agency — January 14, 2018
US citizens lead the way in Russian investigation
