American once touted as possible ambassador to EU tells of being detained at Boston airport and subpoenaed by Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia inquiry

A controversial London-based academic with close ties to Nigel Farage has been detained by the FBI upon arrival in the US and issued a subpoena to testify before Robert Mueller, the special counsel who is investigating possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

Ted Malloch, an American touted last year as a possible candidate to serve as US ambassador to the EU, said he was interrogated by the FBI at Boston’s Logan airport on Wednesday following a flight from London and questioned about his involvement in the Trump campaign.

In a statement sent to the Guardian, Malloch, who described himself as a policy wonk and defender of Trump, said the FBI also asked him about his relationship with Roger Stone, the Republican strategist, and whether he had ever visited the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has resided for nearly six years.

Malloch’s campaign for the diplomatic post came to an end after a report in the Financial Times detailed several apparently misleading claims made in Malloch’s autobiography, including that he was a fellow at Wolfson and Pembroke colleges at Oxford, that he had once been called a “genius” by Margaret Thatcher, and that he was the “first” to coin the phrase “thought leadership”.

NOVEMBER 1, 2002 | CLIP OF GLOBAL CONFERENCE ON TERRORISM, DAY 2

We are suspending Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL), including their political data analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica, from Facebook. Given the public prominence of this organization, we want to take a moment to explain how we came to this decision and why.

We Maintain Strict Standards and Policies

Protecting people’s information is at the heart of everything we do, and we require the same from people who operate apps on Facebook. In 2015, we learned that a psychology professor at the University of Cambridge named Dr. Aleksandr Kogan lied to us and violated our Platform Policies by passing data from an app that was using Facebook Login to SCL/Cambridge Analytica, a firm that does political, government and military work around the globe. He also passed that data to Christopher Wylie of Eunoia Technologies, Inc.

Although Kogan gained access to this information in a legitimate way and through the proper channels that governed all developers on Facebook at that time, he did not subsequently abide by our rules. By passing information on to a third party, including SCL/Cambridge Analytica and Christopher Wylie of Eunoia Technologies, he violated our platform policies. When we learned of this violation in 2015, we removed his app from Facebook and demanded certifications from Kogan and all parties he had given data to that the information had been destroyed. Cambridge Analytica, Kogan and Wylie all certified to us that they destroyed the data.

Several days ago, we received reports that, contrary to the certifications we were given, not all data was deleted. We are moving aggressively to determine the accuracy of these claims. If true, this is another unacceptable violation of trust and the commitments they made. We are suspending SCL/Cambridge Analytica, Wylie and Kogan from Facebook, pending further information.

Per the Post:One idea under consideration is a three-year extension of the DACA program in exchange for three years of wall funding, a G.O.P. official said. This official said the talks, which are being led by senior policy adviser Stephen Miller and legislative affairs head Marc Short, were fluid.

Unfortunately for the dealmaker in chief, such a bill would need both Republican and Democratic support, and so far neither side seems particularly inclined to go along with it. As Democrats eye the possibility of retaking the House in November, they don’t see the point in a temporary reprieve; instead of giving into a short-term deal this year that would give DACA recipients protection, they’d likely prefer to wait until next year to try for complete reform, when they have more leverage and when Trump is less likely to be able to successfully demand wall funding. “I’m not thrilled about including anything for a temporary fix,” Democratic Senator Robert Menendez told the Post. Conservatives in Congress are equally displeased at the prospect. “It would jeopardize the stability of leadership,” Republican Rep. Steve King told Politico. “Forcing amnesty into a must-pass bill? That’s beyond the toleration level [of] conservatives in this conference.”