Manafort associate Samuel Patten has signed a plea agreement on FARA violation, [View all]

[pnwmom]

Last edited Fri Aug 31, 2018, 11:25 AM - Edit history (3)

according to Pete Williams. Hearing this morning at 11.

Also, the Bloomberg report says he was connected with Cambridge Analytica in 2014.

The second link below includes a copy of a court filing.

The third link is to a Natasha Betrand report on Patten from April, with some interesting background.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-31/manafort-associate-sam-patten-is-charged-with-lobbying-violation

Patten is scheduled to appear in federal court in Washington before U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson at 11 a.m. as part of a plea agreement, according to the court docket.

Patten worked for multiple political parties and office-holders in Ukraine, according to his website. He previously worked on the microtargetting operations of Cambridge Analytica during the 2014 election cycle, the Daily Beast reported in April.

His work for Cambridge Analytica was later adopted by "at least one major U.S. presidential candidate," the Daily Beast said. Patten told the publication that his work for Cambridge Analytica was separate from the work of his consulting firm.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/sam-patten-fara-charge

As part of his work for the Opposition Bloc, Patten was in contact with members of Congress, the executive branch, and members of the American media, according to the charging document. He also allegedly arranged for the unnamed Russian national and unnamed Ukrainian oligarch to meet with members of Congress and their staff, per the filing. Specifically, he set up meetings in January 2015 between the Ukrainian oligarch and members of the congressional foreign relations committees, staffers at the State Department and American journalists, according to prosecutors.

Patten helped the Ukrainian oligarch write an op-ed in January 2017 and was successful in placing the piece in an American media outlet in February 2017, according to the charging document.

According to the Friday filing, the Ukrainian oligarch directed Patten not to register as a foreign agent while he was working for the Opposition Blog.

Patten

Read the filing below:


https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/04/a-dc-operatives-long-relationship-with-a-suspected-russian-spy/557438/


Patten describes himself as an “international political consultant” on his website, but he worked at the Oregon office of Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, SCL Group, helping to fine-tune the firm’s voter targeting operations in the runup to the 2014 midterm elections, according to investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed, now a columnist for Middle East Eye. Patten alluded to this work on his website, writing that he worked with “one of London’s most innovative strategic communications companies” on “a beta run of a cutting-edge electoral approach” that “included taking micro-targeting to the next level” during the 2014 congressional cycle. Those technologies, he wrote, were “adopted by at least one major U.S. presidential candidate.”

Both Republican candidates Ted Cruz and Donald Trump employed Cambridge Analytica during the 2016 election. Mueller is now scrutinizing the Trump campaign’s ties to Cambridge Analytica, whose board included Trump’s campaign CEO and former chief strategist, Steve Bannon. Bannon interviewed Patten in July 2016 for his SiriusXM radio show, Breitbart News Daily, about a group Patten represents called the Committee to Destroy ISIS. There is no evidence that Patten did any work with Cambridge Analytica or the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. But his relationship with the data firm did not end with the 2014 midterm elections. According to The Guardian’s Carole Cadwalladr, Patten “played a central role” in the firm’s work in Nigeria in early 2015—work that included hiring Israeli computer hackers to search for “kompromat,” or compromising information, on the candidate challenging the incumbent president at the time, Goodluck Jonathan. Patten didn’t respond to a request for comment about the Nigeria campaign.