1) Was the debunked Alfa Bank/Trump story a week before the election a Fusion GPS hoax?
...a few observations and links.
...a few observations and links.
2) A week before the 2016, Slate published a bombshell story claiming that internet sleuths analyzing DNS data discovered a troubling connection between a Trump server and an Alfa Bank server. Alfa Bank is one of the largest banks in Russia..
3) The article, citing a Professor named Jean Camp and also the original researcher going under the moniker Tea Leaves, made headlines days before the election, and added to the growing allegations that the Trump campaign had nefarious connections with Russia.
4) Even Hillary Clinton spread this unconfirmed story:
5) The story was immediately debunked, as likely being a misinterpretation of DNS logs. Rather than being a nefarious connection, the logs showed pings between Alfa Bank and a Cendyn server (who hosted the Trump-email(.)com domain). google.com/amp/s/www.wash…
6) The Intercept published an even more scathing critique of the story on Nov 1 2016. Not only questioning the claims in the Slate story, the article interviewed Tea Leaves themselves, questioning how they could even get a hold of private DNS logs. google.com/amp/s/static.t…
7) Robert Graham, a Clinton supporter and IT expert, offered a thorough rebuttal to the story, breaking down the Slate article's claims and saying that Tea Leaves was "acting in bad faith". blog.erratasec.com/2016/11/in-whi…
8) Apparently Jean Camp & Tea Leaves "research" was shopped around for at least the month of October 2016, with only Slate published the unverified claims.
9) But the story spawned countless rumors of a financial/communication back channel between Trump and Russia, days leading up to the election.
10) After the election, Alfa Bank threatened to sue Jean Camp for the source of the DNS logs, which some bloggers were now claiming were actually forged, not simply misinterpreted. cyberscoop.com/alfa-bank-l-je…
11) Although the debunking of the Alfa Bank/Trump story is not news itself, I think it's worthwhile to put the story in the current context of Russiagate.
12) We've now seen conclusive evidence that the entirety of the Russiagate scandal is merely a concoction of Clinton-financed Fusion GPS and it's DOJ & FBI co-conspirators, including Simpson, Steele, McCabe, Strzok, and Bruce and Nellie Ohr.
13) After reading through the controversial Steele Dossier, I noticed that the September 14th report focused on Alfa Bank. The report details alleged corrupt dealings between Alfa-connected oligarchs and Putin.
14) One thing that immediately jumped out to me was the misspelling of "Alfa" as "Alpha" (the conventional spelling). This misspelling was made numerous times throughout the report. 
15) It occurred to me that the person writing the report was unfamiliar with the bank, and likely transcribed the bank name from someone they were speaking to, rather than citing documents they were looking at.
16) We've been told that the dossier's author was Christopher Steele, a retired British Mi6 officer contracted by Fusion GPS to investigate Trump/Russia connections.
17) However, Steele was a Russian intelligence expert, who actually lived in Russia and headed the Russia MI6 desk. One would think he would know how the spell Alfa, the largest bank in Russia. 
18) So who wrote this report? I think there's two possibilities. 1) Someone at Orbis Business Intelligence (Steele's intelligence company, or 2) Someone at Fusion GPS.
19) Although it's possible an Orbis analyst wrote the "Alpha" report, I'm now inclined to think it was someone at Fusion GPS.
20) Could it be Glenn Simpson who transcribed the misspelling? Or could it be Nellie Ohr, wife or top DOJ Attorney Bruce Ohr, recently disclosed as working for Fusion GPS and working on the anti-Trump work? google.com/amp/amp.dailyc…
21) Additionally, it's been discovered that during her time working on the anti-Trump campaign for Fusion GPS (ostensibly aiding Christopher Steele, who later met with her husband Bruce Ohr), she received a license to use a HAM radio? wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/LicArch…
22) Was it Nellie Ohr who misspelled Alfa, as she was secretly communicating on HAM radio to various Steele-affiliated Russian sources? I'm not sure, but it's plausible at this point.
23) But what remains quite coincidental is that only weeks before the mysterious Tea Leaves and Jean Camp began shopping the fake Alfa/Trump story, the "Alpha" report appears in the Steele dossier on September 14.
24) Were these unrelated incidents, or part of a coordinated campaign (a signature style of smearing by Fusion GPS)? Was the whole thing meant to be used to implicate Trump with fake Alfa Bank ties? Was it intended to be used to get more FISA warrants?
25) Time will tell. But I think it's worth occasionally looking at past debunked Trump/Russia stories with fresh eyes.
@
great job on the Kramer thread, I made a Steele dossier related thread today too.
