Was There a Connection Between a Russian Bank and the Trump Campaign?
A team of computer scientists sifted through records of unusual Web traffic in search of answers.
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“In the small town of Lititz, Pennsylvania, a domain linked to the Trump Organization (mail1.trump-email.com) seemed to be behaving in a peculiar way. The server that housed the domain belonged to a company called Listrak..”
Examining records for the Trump domain, Max’s group discovered D.N.S. lookups from a pair of servers owned by Alfa Bank, one of the largest banks in Russia. Alfa Bank’s computers were looking up the address of the Trump server nearly every day.”
“..between May and September, Alfa Bank looked up the Trump Organization’s domain more than two thousand times. “..And we thought, Why the hell is a Russian bank communicating with a server that belongs to the Trump Organization, and at such a rate?”
“Only one other entity seemed to be reaching out to the Trump Organization’s domain with any frequency: Spectrum Health, of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Spectrum Health is closely linked to the DeVos family..”
“Why was Trump Org’s domain, [sending]mass-marketing e-mails..? &why were computers at Alfa Bank &Spectrum Health trying to reach a server that didn’t seem to be doing anything? After analyzing data,Max said,”We decided this was a covert communication channel.”
“Not only is there clearly something there but there’s clearly something that someone has gone to great lengths to conceal”..
Jean Camp,of Indiana U,also vetted some of the data.”These people who should not be communicating are clearly communicating,”she said.
“.. the Bureau had intel from informants suggesting a..connection between the Trump Org &Russian banks..The info from Max’s group could be a significant advance.”The F.B.I. was looking for people in the U.S. who were helping Russia to influence the election..”
The Trump domain had been shut down after the Times contacted Alfa Bank’s representatives—but before the newspaper contacted Trump. “That shows a human interaction,” Max concluded. “Certain actions leave fingerprints.”
“Alfa Bank was founded by Mikhail Fridman,..Along w/an economist named Petr Aven..Fridman built Alfa Bank into one of the most successful businesses in the new Russia. Its parent company, Alfa Group, now controls the country’s largest private bank..”
“Alfa’s principals &representatives have enjoyed access to U.S. politicians at the highest levels. Fridman &Aven met several times with officials at the Obama White House, discussing such issues as Russia’s effort to gain entrance to the World Trade Org..”
“Don McGahn, the White House counsel, came from Jones Day, one of the law firms that represent Alfa Bank in the United States. McGahn brought five Jones Day lawyers with him into the White House; six more were appointed to senior posts in the Administration.”
Jones Day has done work for businesses belonging to a long list of Russian oligarchs, including Oleg Deripaska, Viktor Vekselberg, and Alexander Mashkevich.
“In June, 2017, Trump nominated Brian Benczkowski, a lawyer who had overseen the Stroz Friedberg report for Alfa Bank, to lead the criminal division of the Justice Department.”
[Benczkkwski, formerly of Kirkland Ellis, where William Barr was a partner.]
At his confirmation hearing, Benczkowski said emphatically that Stroz Friedberg, like Mandiant, had rejected the possibility of complicity. The investigation, he said, found that “there was no communications link between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank.”
“The client was a Russian bank that is under suspicion of having a direct connection with the Trump campaign,” Senator Richard Durbin said, during the hearing.”
“I don’t know what’s in Special Prosecutor Mueller’s investigation,” Benczkowski said. “I’m a lawyer in private practice. I have no idea what he’s up to, other than what I read in the papers.”
“The timing of the communication was not random, and it wasn’t regular-periodic,” Paul said. “It was a better match for human activity.”
“For some, the most baffling part of the puzzle was the way that the lookups stopped. The Trump domain vanished from the Web on the morning of Friday, September 23rd, two days after the Times presented its data to B.G.R., Alfa Bank’s lobbyists in Washington..”
“..but before it called Trump or Cendyn. In Max’s view, this was evidence of direct contact between Alfa Bank and Trump.”
“What you have here is a minimally viable technical footprint of a small number of people who are using what I suspect is an ad-hoc system to communicate,” Paul said.”
“Anytime the F.B.I. or anyone else pulls apart a cyber-crime organization, there is always some communication structure that’s used for command and control. That’s where the high-value communications happen.”