The Ledger
The Old Goat pulled the public campaign-finance record for the Cambridge Analytica cast: every federal disbursement to Cambridge Analytica and SCL in the FEC's Schedule B for the 2014 through 2020 cycles, and every itemized contribution under the names Robert, Rebekah and Jennifer Mercer. The pull is saved in the project data folder (fec_cambridge_analytica_payments_2026-10-09.csv and fec_mercer_nix_contributions_2026-10-09.csv). The first dispatch to use the lens was A Promise With a Date On It. This one is the money.
What Federal Committees Paid Cambridge
DOCUMENTED. Between June 2014 and March 2018, federal committees reported 89 disbursements to Cambridge Analytica totaling $16,091,197. By committee: Donald J. Trump for President, Inc., $5,912,500 in five payments between July 29 and Dec. 12, 2016, all labeled data management, including $5,000,000 on Sept. 1, 2016. Cruz for President, $5,805,552 in 19 payments from July 2015 to June 2016. Make America Number 1, $1,476,484. John Bolton Super PAC, $1,152,300. Keep the Promise II, $570,000. Carson America, $438,065. The rest is spread across the North Carolina Republican Party, Thom Tillis' committee and a handful of House and Senate campaigns.
The FEC's own purpose lines are worth reading. Fourteen of the Cruz campaign's payments, $4,720,795, are described with phrases such as "micro-targeting," "microtargeting consulting fees," "donor modeling," "voter modeling" and "survey research." Microtargeting is not only the Old Goat's word; it is on the public record as the stated purpose of millions of dollars. The Old Goat is not claiming anything improper in those payments. Campaigns hire data vendors. The point is that the record names the service.
Where the Money Came From
DOCUMENTED, with a caution on identity. The Mercer name returns more than one person in the FEC's data, so the Old Goat kept only itemized contributions that list Renaissance Technologies as the employer or an East Setauket or St. James, New York address, which is how the hedge-fund co-CEO Robert Mercer files. That set is 285 contributions totaling $47,427,686 from May 2011 to November 2025. The largest recipients were Make America Number 1, $15,500,000 in four gifts between April 2015 and July 2016 (including $11,000,000 on April 10, 2015); John Bolton Super PAC, $5,000,000 in ten $500,000 gifts; Freedom Partners Action Fund, $2,500,000; and Club for Growth Action and American Crossroads, $2,000,000 each.
Put the two ledgers side by side. Make America Number 1 received $15.5 million from Robert Mercer and paid Cambridge Analytica $1,476,484. John Bolton Super PAC received $5 million from Robert Mercer and paid Cambridge Analytica $1,152,300. The firm that was paid had Mercer family backing, which Wylie and others have described, and the committees paying it were funded by the same family. Super PACs hiring a vendor their donor backs is legal and common. The Old Goat is describing the loop, not alleging a crime.
The giving did not stop in 2018. DOCUMENTED: Robert Mercer, with the same employer and Setauket address, gave $814,399 to the Trump 47 Committee on March 25, 2024, $500,000 to General John Stark PAC on June 6, 2022, and $1,860,800 across the 2020 cycle, including $355,200 to Trump Victory on Feb. 14, 2020. His itemized giving to committees with "Trump" in their names totals $1,174,999, and to the Republican National Committee $1,126,400. Rebekah Mercer's New York-address contributions total $981,050 from 2011 to 2023; $449,400 of that went to Trump Victory on June 13, 2016. That identity match is by New York residence and name, so it is weaker than the Renaissance match.
The Company After the Scandal
DOCUMENTED. Companies House lists Emerdata Limited (number 10911848), established in August 2017 by people connected to Cambridge Analytica, with Jennifer Lynne Mercer and Rebekah Anne Mercer as directors appointed March 16, 2018, and Alexander Nix appointed January 23, 2018. Another source says Nix resigned as an Emerdata director on March 28, 2018, which the Old Goat did not confirm in the official register. The registry shows the company in administration, and a corporate person of significant control, Cambridge Analytica Holdings LLC, ceased on Aug. 9, 2022. The founder of SCL Group, Nigel Oakes, said in May 2018 that plans for Emerdata to acquire Cambridge and SCL had been abandoned and the company would be wound down.
REPORTED. Nix accepted a seven-year disqualification from acting as a company director in the United Kingdom, effective Oct. 5, 2020. The Insolvency Service said he caused or permitted SCL Elections or associated companies to market themselves as offering "potentially unethical services" to prospective clients; Nix said he made no admission of wrongdoing and that the government did not allege a breach of law. The Federal Trade Commission approved a roughly $5 billion settlement with Facebook in 2019 over its handling of user data, including the 87 million users' information shared with Cambridge Analytica.
What the Pull Did Not Find
Zero is a claim, so the Old Goat is specific about it. No FEC contribution matched Alexander Nix; the 28 results for the name were people called Nixon or other spellings and none is claimed here. The "Jennifer Mercer" results (199 contributions, $54,932) list employers such as Kay Jewelers and TransUnion, so they are other people and are not attributed to the Emerdata director. AggregateIQ, a Canadian firm, and SCL returned no federal payments in the pull. Cambridge Analytica's UK and foreign clients would not appear in the FEC at all. None of this proves absence of anything.
What the Old Goat Thinks It Means
This part is opinion, labeled as opinion. The loop in the filings is the lineage the Old Goat has been describing: a billionaire family financed the data firm, financed the vehicles that hired it, and in 2024 was still writing six-figure checks to Trump's joint fundraising committee. Wylie's account, as reported by NBC in 2018, is that Bannon directed the firm toward voter-turnout suppression research; the filings do not touch that. They show who paid for the machinery. The Old Goat's INFERENCE is that anyone who wants an AI version of that machinery can rent it from a vendor in the same ecosystem on a software subscription, and the earlier dispatch put the Parscale money on the table: $3.16 million to Campaign Nucleus since 2022, described by the FEC as software, hosting and voter data. Nothing in these filings shows AI-driven persuasion. The Old Goat's argument is still that the tools, the donors and the motive are the same, and that the burden of proof sits where the money is.
For what the filings cannot show, there are two other paths, and the Old Goat intends to follow them: vendor contracts in USAspending for the federal agencies that now make AI media, and the platform ad libraries, where a political ad has to declare who paid.
You can tell what a machine is for by who keeps paying to build it.
The Old Goat will update this dispatch as new filings arrive, and welcomes corrections to any figure above.