Blunt's among campaigns that employed controversial data firm Cambridge Analytica

WASHINGTON • Sen. Roy Blunt’s 2016 Senate campaign was among those that employed the data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica that is now under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission and under political probing on Capitol Hill.

Federal Election Commission records show that Blunt paid the firm $12,000 in October, 2015, for “data services,” 13 months before he defeated then-Democratic Secretary of State Jason Kander. The $12,000 pales in comparison to the nearly $6 million paid to Cambridge by President Donald Trump’s campaign. Cambridge also received about $5.8 million from the presidential campaign of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, whose consultant was the Missouri-based Republican Jeff Roe.

According to multiple news reports, the FTC is delving into the data analytics firm for mining personal data about tens of millions of Facebook users without their knowledge in order to help politicians craft messages around psychological profiles based off that data. Democrats on Capitol Hill have also said they’ll try to interview a Cambridge whistleblower.

Burson Snyder, a spokeswoman for Blunt's 2016 campaign, said that Friends of Roy Blunt "briefly engaged Cambridge during the 2016 cycle for the purposes of a pilot project testing their capabilities vs. the methodology we were already using.

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