Rebekah Mercer — Conservative Political Financier, Cambridge Analytica Co-Founder, Heritage Foundation Trustee
Role: Director, Mercer Family Foundation; Co-owner, Breitbart News; Chair, Make America Number 1 super PAC; Trustee, Heritage Foundation; Co-founder, Parler; Director, Emerdata Ltd (Cambridge Analytica successor)
Severity: P1
Bio and Background
Rebekah Ann Mercer (born December 6, 1973) is an American heiress, Republican political donor, and director of the Mercer Family Foundation. She is the second of three daughters of Robert Mercer, the billionaire former co-CEO of Renaissance Technologies, one of the most successful hedge funds in history.
Mercer graduated from Stanford University with a B.S. in biology and mathematics, and earned an M.S. in operations research and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business. She worked briefly as a trader at Renaissance Technologies before leaving the firm.
When the Mercer family became involved in conservative political causes following Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential loss, Rebekah Mercer assumed oversight of the family’s political projects while her father provided the financing. According to Bloomberg, she “began overseeing day-to-day operations of political projects for the Mercer family” and became “the driving force behind” their political activities.
Source: Wikipedia, “Rebekah Mercer.”
Source: Bloomberg, “GOP megadonor Mercers distance themselves from Trump for 2024 campaign,” November 18, 2022. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/18/gop-megadonor-mercers-distance-themselves-from-trump-for-2024-campaign.html
Documented Actions
Breitbart News Investment and Ownership (2011–Present)
The Mercer family met Andrew Breitbart, founder of Breitbart News, at a Club for Growth conference in 2011. Breitbart introduced them to Steve Bannon, who became their political advisor. In June 2011, Bannon drafted a business plan for the Mercers to invest $10 million in Breitbart News in exchange for a large stake, placing Bannon on the company’s board.
After Andrew Breitbart’s death in March 2012, Steve Bannon became executive chairman. Under his leadership — with Mercer financing — Breitbart became what Bannon explicitly described as “the platform for the alt-right.”
In November 2017, Robert Mercer announced he had sold his stake in Breitbart News to his daughters. Rebekah Mercer became a co-owner of the media outlet alongside her sisters.
Source: The New Yorker, “The Reclusive Hedge-Fund Tycoon Behind the Trump Presidency,” March 17, 2017.
Source: SourceWatch, “Rebekah Mercer.”
Cambridge Analytica Founding, Leadership, and FTC Action (2013–2019)
Following Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential loss, the Mercers invested in Cambridge Analytica, a data mining and analysis company, hoping to build a technological edge for conservative campaigns. Rebekah Mercer served on the company’s board alongside Steve Bannon.
Cambridge Analytica used Facebook quiz apps to harvest personal data from tens of millions of Facebook users without their knowledge — not just from users who took the quizzes, but from their Facebook friends who had set more restrictive privacy settings.
In July 2019, the Federal Trade Commission sued Cambridge Analytica, alleging the company “employed deceptive tactics to harvest personal information from tens of millions of Facebook users for voter profiling and targeting.” The FTC separately imposed a record $5 billion penalty on Facebook for privacy violations related to Cambridge Analytica’s data access.
Cambridge Analytica filed for bankruptcy in May 2018. However, Rebekah Mercer remains a director of Emerdata Ltd, a U.K. company founded in 2017 that absorbed Cambridge Analytica’s data and operations. According to investigative journalist Wendy Siegelman’s reporting, Emerdata remains active as of 2024.
Source: FTC, “FTC Sues Cambridge Analytica, Settles with Former CEO and App Developer,” July 24, 2019.
Source: FTC, “FTC Imposes $5 Billion Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook,” July 24, 2019. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2019/07/ftc-imposes-5-billion-penalty-sweeping-new-privacy-restrictions-facebook
Source: Wendy Siegelman, “Update on Cambridge Analytica founder and companies,” Substack, 2024. https://wendysiegelman.substack.com/p/update-on-cambridge-analytica-founder
Julian Assange Outreach via Cambridge Analytica (2016)
During the 2016 presidential election, Rebekah Mercer proposed creating a searchable database for Hillary Clinton’s emails in the public domain. She forwarded this suggestion to Alexander Nix, CEO of Cambridge Analytica, who emailed the request to Julian Assange of WikiLeaks. Assange declined the offer.
Source: Wikipedia, “Rebekah Mercer.”
Make America Number 1 Super PAC Leadership (2015–Present)
Rebekah Mercer has served as chair of Make America Number 1 (originally Keep the Promise I), the Mercer family’s super PAC, since 2015. The PAC was initially formed to support Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign. After Cruz withdrew, the PAC pivoted to support Donald Trump.
Robert Mercer contributed $15.5 million to the super PAC in 2016 — $13.5 million during the Cruz primary campaign and $2 million after it became a pro-Trump entity. The PAC employed Kellyanne Conway as president from August 2015 until she joined the Trump campaign in August 2016. Steve Bannon was also employed by the PAC before becoming Trump’s campaign CEO.
When Kellyanne Conway and David Bossie both left to join the Trump campaign, Rebekah Mercer took over day-to-day operations of the super PAC herself, despite “having no formal political experience” according to CNN.
Glittering Steel, a production company co-owned by Bannon and financed by the Mercers, produced videos for Make America Number 1 and received approximately $700,000 from the super PAC according to campaign finance filings.
Source: Wikipedia, “Make America Number 1.”
Source: Washington Post, “The Mercers and Stephen Bannon: How a populist power base was funded and built,” March 17, 2017.
Source: SourceWatch, “Rebekah Mercer.”
Trump Presidential Transition Team (2016–2017)
After Trump’s 2016 victory, Rebekah Mercer served on the executive committee of Trump’s presidential transition team. The Mercers introduced Trump to Steve Bannon (who became White House Chief Strategist) and Kellyanne Conway (who became Counselor to the President).
Source: Wikipedia, “Rebekah Mercer.”
Heritage Foundation Trusteeship (Current)
Rebekah Mercer is one of eighteen trustees of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank that developed Project 2025 — the 900-page policy blueprint for a second Trump administration that outlines plans to consolidate executive power, purge the federal workforce through Schedule F, and dismantle the administrative state.
The Mercer Family Foundation has been a donor to the Heritage Foundation over multiple years. Mercer attended a Trump fundraising dinner in Palm Beach in April 2024 as one of the co-chairs.
Source: Heritage Foundation, “Board of Trustees.” https://www.heritage.org/board-trustees
Source: Wendy Siegelman, “Update on Cambridge Analytica founder and companies,” 2024.
Parler Co-Founding and Ownership (2018)
In August 2018, Rebekah Mercer funded and co-founded Parler, a social media platform marketed as a conservative alternative to Twitter. Parler became a haven for 2020 election conspiracy theories and was used extensively by participants in the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack to organize.
Following January 6, Amazon Web Services removed Parler from its hosting platform, citing violations of its terms of service related to content moderation. Apple and Google also removed Parler from their app stores. The platform eventually returned under new ownership.
Source: Wikipedia, “Rebekah Mercer.”
Source: CNBC, “GOP megadonor Mercers distance themselves from Trump for 2024 campaign,” November 18, 2022.
Government Accountability Institute (Ongoing)
Rebekah Mercer chairs the Government Accountability Institute (GAI), a nonprofit research organization co-founded by Steve Bannon and Peter Schweizer in 2012. GAI produced Clinton Cash, the book and film that attacked the Clinton Foundation during the 2016 campaign. Rebekah Mercer and Steve Bannon co-produced the film version.
According to tax records, DonorsTrust (a conduit for anonymous conservative donations) gave $1.5 million to GAI in a single year.
Source: CNBC, “Mercers weigh backing Trump with massive war chest,” November 21, 2023. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/21/mercers-weigh-backing-trump-with-massive-war-chest.html
Source: Washington Post, “The Mercers and Stephen Bannon.”
Relationship with Steve Bannon (2011–2018)
Rebekah Mercer maintained a close political partnership with Steve Bannon from 2011 through 2018. They collaborated on:
- Breitbart News investment and editorial direction
- Cambridge Analytica development
- Make America Number 1 super PAC operations
- Clinton Cash production
- Government Accountability Institute
- Reclaim New York (a government transparency nonprofit)
- Glittering Steel productions
In January 2018, following Bannon’s public falling out with Trump after the publication of Fire and Fury, Rebekah Mercer publicly distanced herself from Bannon, stating she had not spoken to him “in many months” and would no longer back him financially. She emphasized that she continued to support Trump.
Source: Wikipedia, “Rebekah Mercer.”
Source: CNBC, “GOP megadonor Mercers distance themselves from Trump for 2024 campaign.”
Return to Trump Support (2024)
After distancing themselves from Trump following January 6 and declining to support his 2024 campaign initially, the Mercers returned to Trump’s orbit in 2024. In April 2024, Rebekah and Robert Mercer attended a fundraising dinner with Trump in Palm Beach, Florida, serving as co-chairs of the event.
According to investigative journalist Wendy Siegelman: “While Rebekah Mercer seemed to step back from Trump in the 2020 election, it appears that she is once again funding his campaign.”
Source: Wendy Siegelman, “Update on Cambridge Analytica founder and companies,” 2024.
Pattern Analysis
Rebekah Mercer represents a distinctive model of political influence: the operational manager of a family political operation who converts inherited wealth into political infrastructure. Unlike typical donors who write checks, Mercer has taken direct leadership roles — chairing super PACs, sitting on corporate boards, producing opposition research films, and co-founding social media platforms.
Key patterns in her documented activities:
1. Infrastructure building over candidate backing: The Mercer political operation invests in infrastructure — media (Breitbart), data (Cambridge Analytica, Emerdata), social platforms (Parler), think tanks (Heritage Foundation, GAI) — that outlasts individual candidates. This approach creates durable political capacity that can be deployed for multiple campaigns and causes.
2. Centralized coordination across entities: Multiple organizations — Breitbart, Cambridge Analytica, Make America Number 1, GAI, Glittering Steel — operated with overlapping leadership (Mercer, Bannon), shared funding (Mercer Family Foundation, Robert Mercer direct donations), and coordinated messaging during the 2016 campaign. Campaign finance watchdogs raised questions about illegal coordination.
3. Data-driven voter manipulation: Cambridge Analytica’s harvesting of Facebook user data without consent represented a new frontier in political data operations. The FTC found the company engaged in “deceptive tactics.” The data infrastructure created by Cambridge Analytica may persist through successor companies like Emerdata.
4. Project 2025 and institutional capture: As a Heritage Foundation trustee, Mercer is formally involved in the organization that produced Project 2025 — the comprehensive blueprint for dismantling the administrative state that is now being implemented by the Trump administration through Schedule F, DOGE, and agency purges.
Severity Assessment
Immediate harm: Significant — Cambridge Analytica’s data practices affected tens of millions of Facebook users; Parler hosted organizing for January 6; Breitbart has been documented as a primary vector for disinformation
Democratic erosion: High — the Mercer political infrastructure has funded and operationalized the “deconstruction of the administrative state” doctrine now being implemented; Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 provides the implementation roadmap
Institutional capture: High — through Heritage Foundation trusteeship, Mercer is formally connected to the organization supplying personnel and policy for the current administration’s consolidation of executive power
Accountability Status
Current status: Active political donor and operative; Heritage Foundation trustee; Director of Emerdata Ltd (Cambridge Analytica successor); co-owner of Breitbart News; chair of Government Accountability Institute. Returned to Trump’s political orbit in 2024 after initial distancing.
Legal Exposure
| Area | Exposure | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Cambridge Analytica FTC action | FTC sued company; company filed bankruptcy | Mercer not personally named; FTC settled with Nix and Kogan |
| Campaign finance coordination | Allegations raised | Campaign finance watchdogs alleged improper coordination between super PAC and campaign; no formal charges filed |
| Emerdata Ltd | Active company | Mercer remains director; company absorbed Cambridge Analytica data |
| Personal criminal exposure | None known | No criminal charges filed against Mercer personally |
Truth and Reconciliation Considerations
Why Mercer Is a Priority TRC Subject
Rebekah Mercer occupies a unique position in the accountability landscape: she is the operational manager of one of the most consequential political funding operations of the past decade, with direct leadership roles across multiple organizations that together constitute a vertically integrated political infrastructure — from data harvesting to media distribution to policy development to campaign operations.
Unlike political operatives who serve campaigns or officials who hold office, Mercer’s activities span the full pipeline from research to implementation. A TRC process that documents only officials and operatives while ignoring the funding and infrastructure layer will have missed a critical part of the democratic erosion mechanism.
Investigation Priorities
- Cambridge Analytica full documentation: The FTC action established that deceptive data practices occurred. A TRC should document the full scope of data harvested, how it was used in the 2016 and subsequent campaigns, and whether any of this data or methodology persists through Emerdata or other successor entities.
- Coordination across Mercer-funded entities: The overlapping leadership, shared funding, and simultaneous operations of Breitbart, Cambridge Analytica, Make America Number 1, GAI, and Glittering Steel during 2016 raise questions about whether the entities operated as a coordinated political operation. Campaign finance law prohibits coordination between super PACs and campaigns.
- Heritage Foundation and Project 2025: As a Heritage Foundation trustee, Mercer has formal governance responsibility for the organization that produced Project 2025. A TRC should document the planning, funding, and personnel pipeline that connected Heritage to the current administration’s policy implementation.
- Parler and January 6: Parler was used to organize and discuss the January 6 Capitol attack. As the platform’s funder and co-founder, Mercer’s knowledge of content moderation decisions and platform policies in the period before January 6 should be documented.
- Emerdata and ongoing data operations: Emerdata Ltd absorbed Cambridge Analytica’s assets. A TRC should determine what data, methodologies, and operational capacity were preserved and whether they have been deployed in subsequent campaigns.
Testimony Value
Category: High. Rebekah Mercer possesses knowledge about:
- The strategic intent and operational coordination of Mercer-funded political entities
- Cambridge Analytica’s data practices, targeting strategies, and successor operations
- The funding and development of Project 2025
- Parler’s content moderation policies before January 6
- The relationship between donor funding and policy development at Heritage Foundation
- The full scope of Mercer family political giving through direct donations and foundation grants
Institutional Reform Recommendations
- Dark money transparency: The Mercer Family Foundation’s grants to DonorsTrust, which then redistributes to political nonprofits, obscures the ultimate funding sources. Legislation requiring disclosure of the original donor when funds pass through intermediaries would increase transparency.
- Data privacy in political campaigns: The Cambridge Analytica case revealed that political campaigns operate outside the consumer protection frameworks that apply to commercial data use. Federal legislation should extend data privacy protections to political uses of personal data.
- Super PAC coordination enforcement: The overlapping personnel and operations across Mercer-funded entities illustrate the difficulty of enforcing coordination prohibitions. Structural reforms — such as cooling-off periods before PAC personnel can join campaigns — would strengthen the wall between independent expenditures and coordinated campaign activity.
- Foundation disclosure: Private foundations like the Mercer Family Foundation should be required to disclose not just grant recipients but the specific purposes for which grants were made, enabling public assessment of whether charitable funds are being used for political purposes.
Investigative Trail Pointers (Public Records)
Education only — verify independently. Absence of hits is not proof.
| Channel | Starting points |
|---|---|
| FEC | Make America Number 1 filings; Rebekah Mercer individual contributions; Robert Mercer contributions |
| FTC | Cambridge Analytica complaint and settlement documents (2019) |
| IRS | Mercer Family Foundation Form 990 filings (ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer) |
| UK Companies House | Emerdata Ltd filings; Cambridge Analytica / SCL Group dissolution records |
| Heritage Foundation | Board of Trustees disclosure; annual reports |
| ProPublica | Mercer Family Foundation nonprofit records |
| OpenSecrets | Mercer family political giving summaries |
Use public-records-research-specialist, corporate-intelligence-investigator, and public-corruption-ombudsman evidence tiers.
For Trump Supporters: Questions Worth Considering
Cambridge Analytica harvested personal data from tens of millions of Facebook users — including data from people who never took the company’s quiz apps, because it pulled data from their friends’ accounts too. The Federal Trade Commission found these practices were deceptive and sued the company. Facebook paid a $5 billion fine for allowing it to happen.
Here’s a question worth sitting with: If a company harvested your personal data without your consent and used it to target you with political messaging, would you consider that acceptable? Does it change your answer if the targeting was for a candidate you support?
The Mercer family has funded Breitbart (the media platform), Cambridge Analytica (the data operation), Make America Number 1 (the super PAC), and served on the board of the Heritage Foundation (which produced Project 2025). All of these entities worked toward the same political goals. Campaign finance law exists to prevent this kind of coordination because concentrated financial power that controls media, data, policy, and campaign operations represents a threat to democratic accountability.
A second question: If a Democratic billionaire funded a media outlet, a data harvesting company, a super PAC, and served on the board of a think tank producing the governing agenda for a Democratic president — and all of these organizations coordinated their activities — would you consider that a threat to democracy? If your answer is yes, why would the answer be different when the billionaire shares your political preferences?
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Sources
- FTC, “FTC Sues Cambridge Analytica, Settles with Former CEO and App Developer,” July 24, 2019. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2019/07/ftc-sues-cambridge-analytica-settles-former-ceo-app-developer
- FTC, “FTC Imposes $5 Billion Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook,” July 24, 2019. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2019/07/ftc-imposes-5-billion-penalty-sweeping-new-privacy-restrictions-facebook
- Washington Post, “The Mercers and Stephen Bannon: How a populist power base was funded and built,” March 17, 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/mercer-bannon/
- CNBC, “GOP megadonor Mercers distance themselves from Trump for 2024 campaign,” November 18, 2022. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/18/gop-megadonor-mercers-distance-themselves-from-trump-for-2024-campaign.html
- CNBC, “Mercers weigh backing Trump with massive war chest,” November 21, 2023. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/21/mercers-weigh-backing-trump-with-massive-war-chest.html
- Wendy Siegelman, “Update on Cambridge Analytica founder and companies,” Substack, 2024. https://wendysiegelman.substack.com/p/update-on-cambridge-analytica-founder
- Wikipedia, “Rebekah Mercer.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebekah_Mercer_(donor))
- Wikipedia, “Make America Number 1.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_America_Number_1
- SourceWatch, “Rebekah Mercer.” https://sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Rebekah_Mercer
- Heritage Foundation, “Board of Trustees.” https://www.heritage.org/board-trustees
- ProPublica, “Mercer Family Foundation — Nonprofit Explorer.” https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/201982204
- TPR, “Billionaire Investor Robert Mercer To Step Down From Firm, Selling Stake In Breitbart,” November 2, 2017. https://www.tpr.org/2017-11-02/billionaire-investor-robert-mercer-to-step-down-from-firm-selling-stake-in-breitbart
Cross-References
- Steve Bannon — Ideologist of the American Far Right, War Room Architect, Convicted Felon — Close political partner and Mercer-funded operative (2011–2018)
- Cambridge Analytica Data Scandal — Data company co-founded by Mercers (if tracker exists)
- Heritage Foundation — Project 2025 — Think tank where Mercer serves as trustee (if tracker exists)
- Parler — Social Media Platform — Social media platform co-founded by Mercer (if tracker exists)
- Trump 2016 Campaign Funding — Financial Network Analysis — Major donor network (if tracker exists)
Last Updated: June 1, 2026
Profile Status: Active — Heritage Foundation trustee; Emerdata director; Breitbart co-owner; ongoing monitoring
Next Review: Quarterly