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Robert Mercer, co-CEO of Renaissance Technologies, the hedge fund founded by Jim Simons, has quietly become a major funder of Breitbart News and Donald Trump's rise, an often unknown but powerful force in politics, according to numerous reports.
Jim Simons, the former head of Stony Brook University's mathematics department, is best known as the founder of Renaissance Technologies and among the wealthiest Long Islanders.
He has won kudos as a philanthropist who made massive donations to Stony Brook University, remaining a kind of angel at the university where he once worked.
Meanwhile, Robert Mercer, who became co-CEO of Renaissance once Simons retired, has been pouring millions of dollars into an effort to remake the Republican party. And the election of Donald Trump may be his greatest, if only his latest, success.
Mercer has provided money behind many Tea Party...