Short thread on the New Yorker story on Slate's Alfa Bank story
New Yorker has a piece trying to clean up Franklin Foer's Oct. 31, 2016 Slate piece linking the Alfa Bank and Trump Org's servers. Foer has a follow up of his own at The Atlantic. theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
Foer of course does not mention his sourcing for his story. But we know from House Intel documents that DNC lawyer Michael Sussmann told him about Alfa Bank stuff in mid-Sept 2016. Fusion GPS and Steele were working on this angle.
Foer acknowledges that he was chasing Eric Lichtblau, then of NYT, on the Alfa Bank story. "Russian Roulette" has some insight into how Lichtblau came by the Alfa Bank info. The story "was being privately promoted to journalists by Clinton campaign aides," reads the book.
Lichtblau was chasing the story since mid-Sept. 2016, per "Russian Roulette." Well on Sept. 14, 2016, Steele makes his one and only mention of Alfa Bank in his dossier. It doesn't mention the server angle, but instead casts Alfa owners as Kremlin insiders.
