As Congress and the U.S. news media continue to lose their collective minds over what appears to be a meaningless amount of advertising dollars purchased on Facebook by "potentially Russian linked" accounts, Julian Assange offered up a helpful reminder that if Silicon Valley's tech billionaires colluded with anyone in the months leading up to the 2016 election it was Hillary Clinton, who they all "wanted to win badly."
Podesta emails reveal that Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg wanted Hillary Clinton to win "badly", provided research to her in March 2015 and met privately with her on multiple occasions. https://t.co/SxNQ4etdPD pic.twitter.com/dqyRG2zuln
— Julian Assange ???? (@JulianAssange) September 28, 2017
For evidence that Facebook was "in the tank" for Hillary from the start, one has to look no further than the following email from Facebook's Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandberg, who told John Podesta in June 2015 that she wanted Hillary to "win badly" and was "here to help as I can."
Can you imagine the "outrage" that Senator Warner would feel if such an email were sent to someone on Trump's campaign?
Or what about if Paul Manafort were invited to Facebook headquarters to meet Mark Zuckerberg to discuss "how to move the needle on the specific public policy issues he cares most about." Oh wait, that did happen except it wasn't Trump's campaign head that was invited, it was John Podesta.
And wouldn't you know it, just a few days later Mark Zuckerberg did meet with John Podesta...but we're sure they only discussed the ins and outs of setting up a 501(c)(3).
Of course, the "collusion" between the Hillary team and Facebook goes on and on...here is John Podesta in January 2016 expressing how much he looks forward to working with Facebook to "elect the first woman President of the United States."
Meanwhile, as we noted back in November 2016, Google's Chairman, Eric Schmidt, didn't even pretend to be impartial and actually submitted a thorough "strategic plan" designed to help Hillary win the election.
Among the latest set of Podesta releases, was the following email sent on April 15, 2014 by Google's Eric Schmidt titled "Notes for a 2016 Democratic Campaign" in which the Google/Alphabet Chairman tells Cheryl Mills that "I have put together my thoughts on the campaign ideas and I have scheduled some meetings in the next few weeks for veterans of the campaign to tell me how to make these ideas better. This is simply a draft but do let me know if this is a helpful process for you all."
Google head Eric Schmidt's secret strategic plan for the US election #PodestaEmails https://t.co/LskJODXyXn
More: https://t.co/ZUfh7WDAT5 pic.twitter.com/llq5G9kp5V
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 31, 2016
While there are numerous curious nuances in the plan, presented below in its entirety, the one section that caught our - and Wikileaks' attention - is the following which implicitly suggests Google planned the creation of a voter tracking database, using smart phones:
Key is the development of a single record for a voter that aggregates all that is known about them. In 2016 smart phones will be used to identify, meet, and update profiles on the voter. A dynamic volunteer can easily speak with a voter and, with their email or other digital handle, get the voter videos and other answers to areas they care about (“the benefits of ACA to you” etc.)
All that said, we do very much hope that Senator Warner is able to quickly get to the bottom of exactly who bought those $50,000 worth of Facebook ads...because that's what is really important here.