Will Trump destroy opposition research or will it destroy him?

The days of breaking into the Watergate building in the dark are gone, writes Richard Hall. Opposition research today is more likely to be carried out on a laptop in a cafe. But as politicians continue to lie and research becomes irrelevant, will post-truth politics become the norm?

Will the 2020 US election be a repeat of 2016? (Getty/The Independent)

Opposition research used to be conducted in the shadows – quite literally. The five men who broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office complex needed flashlights. It’s not called the “dark arts” for nothing. Today, the job is more likely to be done by a millennial campaign staffer on their laptop in a coffee shop. The sheer volume and availability of information online has brought much of the work into the light. And yet, these changes have brought with it a paradox: at a time when opposition research is more prevalent than ever, it may be having less of an impact.

One need only look to the current occupant of the White House to see why. Since his emergence as a frontrunner in the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump has been a constant target of the best opposition research money can buy. Revelations that would have sank any other campaign failed to make their mark – from his bankrupt businesses to his boasts about sexually assaulting women.