Follow this thread for live-tweeting coverage, and forgive my typos...
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We’re about to kick off...
Chris is carrying a large ring binder of documents...
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@peterjukes, the host, starts by asking Shahmir about being outed by Number 10 over the weekend
(Lots of camera shutters going off as he talks - a lot of press photographers here)
...
Shahmir has to come out to his family under pressure.
He’s crying as he talks about this “it’s okay, I’m just being a drama queen” warm applause for him...
His mum said “don’t let them shut you up”
His family now need security in Pakistan.
He doesn’t want to think about what it’ll be like to visit...
Peter raises that some of the coverage has taken the line ‘all political campaigns are like this, Obama did this on Facebook’
Chris says ‘campaigning is different from disinformation...’
“Britain is still seen as a cultural leader in the English speaking world. Educated, sophisticated. If you can show these ideas as popular there, it helps makes them popular in the US, eg Farage becoming popular there” (!)...
CA were at the launch of Leave.EU - then claimed they had nothing to do with each other. Now they admit it..
Chris has seen invoices from CA to UKIP and Leave campaign...
40% of Vote Leave’s campaign expenditure went to Aggregate IQ.
Chris says “I helped set up AIQ. It was set up by CA be the dev team. They built the platform.”...
They did not silo any of the work between the web of Leave affiliated campaigns”...
But SCL/CA/AIQ worked for them as one and just distributed out the invoices as the campaigns could pay.
AIQ was called SCL Canada until recently...
Stephen excited about getting him involved because of his minority ethnic background...
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The original donor pulled out, but the Vote Leave treasures then found “a way of getting us some money. They gave us almost £700k!!”
They wanted to spend on campaigns, were told they had to send straight to AIQ...
The actual campaign activity AIQ did for BeLeave will have made this worth £600 an email sent... unlikely that this is what was paid for...
But then in Aug 2016 the Buzzfeed article came out, investigating the weird spend of £625k to students.
Darren panicked. Senior members of Vote Leave advised them, did response to Electoral Commission...
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Back in UK he talked to colleagues about whether they should report it to the electoral commission. People were scared to. He realised they needed good legal advice...
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Chris explains he saw the evidence of this at AIQ. As well as these two there are several confidential whistleblowers who have provided evidence to electoral commission...
BeLeave’s purpose was to present a progressive outlook so they would lose less middle ground voters. So Shahmir didn’t see the negative campaigns...
A: i was the director of research, I helped set up CA based on my research, I negotiated with Mercer’s lawyer about it. Have provided all the evidence of status to guardian and NYT...
Well, it’s like in sport. If an athlete is caught doping, you don’t start a debate about how much the drug helped. You cheat, you’re banned. It’s the only clear and fair way...
Chris met Dominic Cummings in autumn 2015. Then Vote Leave had no data. Cummings asked “how can we create the Palantir of politics?”
Chris then couldn’t see how they could build that in time for campaign...
But AIQ is out if reach of british investigators in Canada.
Chris says you don’t waste money targeting people who are already going to vote for you, you target the others who need to push or pull in some way. Put opponents off voting etc
Chris says first thing is we should encourage people who know about wrongdoing to come forward.
He didn’t for a while because after leaving CA they sued him and he had to sign an NDA. Scary to be up against a billionaires lawyers
He also worked at convincing others to come forward with evidence. This is the end of that process.
He wanted to take time and do it right.
There’s no one moment. It was gradual. At first he was just being told the claims of illegal activity were just ‘remonaing’ and People trying to stop Brexit. He was being given official line by staff of cabinet ministers...
Then he saw Vote Leave start to do cover up
I’ve thrown away everything I’ve been doing for two years. But they were using me.” - Shahmir
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Thanks for reading, forgive any typos.
To keep following this story follow @carolecadwalla and @Byline_Media
For tonight’s revelations on #brexit, here are my tweetnotes...
Worth reading to get up to speed ahead of today’s emergency debate in Parliament...