rigorousintuition.ca

CNN drops Donna Brazile as pundit over WikiLeaks revelations

By Paul Farhi October 31 at 2:51 PM

CNN has cut ties with commentator and interim Democratic National Committee chair Donna Brazile after WikiLeaks revealed that Brazile provided more primary debate questions to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

The network said it accepted Brazile’s resignation as a contributor Monday after the hacked emails showed that she had tipped off Clinton’s campaign to likely questions during the primaries.

In a statement, CNN spokeswoman Lauren Pratapas said, “We are completely uncomfortable with what we have learned about her interactions with the Clinton campaign while she was a CNN contributor.”

WikiLeaks had previously revealed that Brazile had emailed John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, in March about her access to questions that would be asked at CNN-sponsored primary debates. “From time to time I get the questions in advance,” she told Podesta on March 12. She added, “I’ll send a few more.”

CNN acted Monday after more WikiLeaks emails showed that Brazile had, in fact, tipped Podesta to other debate questions. In an email sent to Podesta in early March, she wrote that a question would come from a Flint, Mich., woman who is dealing with that city’s water crisis. “Her family has lead poison and she will ask what, if anything, will Hillary do as president to help the ppl of Flint,” Brazile wrote.

seemslikeadream » Mon Oct 31, 2016 9:27 am wrote:so what?

What does that have to do with Trump?

Freitag » Mon Oct 31, 2016 3:33 pm wrote:

seemslikeadream » Mon Oct 31, 2016 9:27 am wrote:so what?

What does that have to do with Trump?

I posted in the wrong thread by mistake. I had both Trump and Clinton threads open in different tabs.

Although it does support Trump's assertion that the election is "rigged".

seemslikeadream » Mon Oct 31, 2016 9:46 am wrote:
Although it does support Trump's assertion that the election is "rigged".


that is utter bullshit

The Incredibly Sexist Book Once Mysteriously Billed As Trump’s ‘Debut Novel’
HuffPost found ad copy for the novel, which ended up being released by Jeffrey Robinson.

When Jeffrey Robinson’s Trump Tower debuted in July 2012, it failed to receive much attention, despite boasting the tagline, “The sexiest novel of the decade,” and an endorsement from Donald Trump himself.

“Jeffrey Robinson’s novel Trump Tower bares it all,” Trump writes in the only review blurb on the the back cover. “Here is the drama of the Ultra Rich, the Ultra Powerful, and the Ultra Beautiful who call the most glamorous address in the country their home. I can’t wait to see it on television!”

......

Here are just a few of the strangest sex-related scenes in Trump Tower ...

(Spacing in text has been adjusted for this article)



The general manager of Trump Tower checks if a tenant named Cyndi Benson is all right in her apartment, and describes her “gorgeous breasts”:

Slowly opening the door — “Miss Benson?” — there she was, completely naked and gagged, her arms above her head, handcuffed to the top of the brass bedstead, with her legs tied to the bottom of the bedstead, stretched wide apart ... “Miss Benson ...”
Later in that scene:

Although she’d lately added blonde mesh highlights to her dark hair, her big, hazel eyes were the same as when they helped to make her famous, and her high cheekbones were the same, and her legs were the same but, as Belasco had already discovered — being two or three pounds heavier than she’d been as a teenager — she now had absolutely gorgeous breasts.


A tenant named Ricky walks out of his bedroom and orders a stranger to have sex with him:

Just then, Ricky heard some noise down the hall. He followed it to the second bedroom, opened the door, and saw a naked guy on top of a naked girl. He didn’t know either of them. “Oy.” The guy looked over but didn’t stop. “Hey Ricky, I’m Bugs. She’s Shari.” “Don’t mind me.” Ricky stood there. Shari looked up, half-waved, and brought her feet up. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.” He watched them for a moment, then stepped into the room and got into bed with them. “When you’re done with him, luv,” Ricky said to Shari, “you get on top of me. Just be careful this bleeding ankle bracelet don’t leave no marks.”


An elevator operator talks about his newborn child with a tenant and says, “He like his mama’s titties a lot”:

Jaquim pulled a photo out of his pocket and showed it to David. “Seven kilos already. That’s the clothes you and Mrs. Cove bought for him. He like a lot.” “Seven kilos. Good.” David had no idea if that was good or not, but he knew he had to say something nice. Jaquim pointed to his chest and nodded, “He like his mama’s titties a lot.”
Later in that scene:

David mumbled, “I’d probably like his mama’s titties, too,” and, instead of using his key, he rang the bell.


A Hollywood agent named Zeke talks to Katie Couric at a party and brings up something Trump told him about the “absolutely gorgeous girls” he used to have sex with:

“That’s what Trump wanted to know when I mentioned the deal to him. You know what I told him?” “What?” “I said, ‘Donald, when you own the world, you get laid a lot.’” Couric looked at him askance. “And you know what he said to me?” Zeke nodded several times, “He said that when he was single and running around with some of the most beautiful women on the planet, absolutely gorgeous girls, he used to get laid all the time. He said, ‘Zeke, I didn’t have to own the world.’ And I said to him, Donald, of course not, because you already owned the air rights.” Couric smiled politely.


Two female tenants talk about getting lunch and wonder if they’ll be able to keep their clothes on:

“Ladies who lunch,” Cyndi said. “This time,” Alicia suggested, “let’s try to keep our clothes on.”


A lingerie designer talking to a tenant about his goals:

As Firenzi himself described it once to Carson, “I create underwear for the whore that every man prays his mistress might become.”


A friend of Ricky’s gifts what he thinks is a cat:

“Open it,” King said. “We found it in the neighborhood. A stray. And I figured with you all shut up in here like this ... ” Ricky tore the box open and inside was a kitten. “Precisely what every guy needs ... a little pussy.”


An NBC News employee telling a tenant, who also works at NBC, that she will get a promotion over two white co-workers:

“Come on, you’re a shoo-in.” He reminded her, “Two white guys and a great-looking minority girl with perfect boobs? No contest.”


A married tenant named Tina decides to hook up with Ricky and some people ask if they can watch:

Then he saw Tina and smiled. “If it isn’t me visiting nurse service.” She walked up to him and grabbed his arm. “Come do me.” “What a good idea,” he said. “Don’t mind if I do.” One of the women in the living room asked, “Can we watch?” The guy next to her suggested, “Maybe we should film it.” “Fuck you,” Tina said to them and dragged Ricky back into his bedroom.


An employee of Trump Tower named Antonia talks on the phone with a Broadway actor named Tommy. Both consistently refer to themselves in third person throughout the novel:

“Take off your sweatshirt,” he said again. Her hands were trembling. “No.” “Yes,” he said. “Take off your sweatshirt. She reached for the bottom of her sweatshirt, but all she could do was hold onto it. “No.” “Yes.” “I can’t.” “Yes you can. Do as I tell you. Take off your sweatshirt.” She tried to swallow, but her mouth was totally dry. “I can’t...” “Do it. Take off your sweatshirt. Do as I tell you.” She closed her eyes, hesitated, then pulled off her sweatshirt.

“Did you do it?” “Yes.” “Now... take off your jeans...” “No...” “Yes. Take off your jeans. Go on.” Almost in a trance, she unbuttoned her jeans, opened them, and let them fall to her ankles. “What are you wearing now?” He asked. She kept her eyes shut tight and whispered, “My bra and panties.” “Now take off your bra.” Her hands were shaking as she reached behind her and did what he wanted her to do. “Yes?” He asked. “Yes,” she said and let her bra fall to the couch. “Now take off your panties.” She didn’t budge.

She moved her hands and touched herself and now her knees were so weak that she couldn’t stand up any more, and she fell onto the couch, still touching herself. He kept whispering to her, and she couldn’t stop. “Tommy...” she groaned. “Tommy… Antonia wants Tommy...” “Antonia is going to have Tommy,” he said. “Tonight. Tommy is coming to Antonia’s apartment and Tommy will ring the bell, and Antonia is going to open the door for Tommy, completely naked...”

“Yes,” she groaned. “Yes, Antonia?” “Yes... yes... completely naked.” “And do whatever Tommy wants.” “Yes.” She couldn’t stop. “Whatever Tommy wants.” “Whatever Tommy wants.” “Yes... yes,” she said it very loudly. “Whatever Tommy wants.”


A tenant named Mikey keeps convincing female guests to take off their tops:

Mikey walked up to her. “Don’t let Wendy be the only one...” “Who’s Wendy?” He pointed to the half-naked woman. “Sharon, over there.” “I thought you said her name was Wendy.” “The left one is Wendy, the right one is Sharon. What do you call yours?” Laughing, she yanked up her sweater and, bra-less, showed him a small tattoo on the side of each of her breasts. “Left ... and right.”

“How cool is that,” Mikey said, helping her out of her sweater. “Hey,” Joey objected, “this is my new girlfriend.”

“No, pal,” Mikey insisted, “this woman’s left and right belongs to the ages.” He took her hand and began parading her around the room, showing everyone her tattoos.
Later in that scene:

After the woman fell asleep, Mikey came out, looked around and saw there were at least six women not wearing tops. He proclaimed, “I’m dead. I’ve gone to boob heaven.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/don ... ea3d874ca9

seemslikeadream wrote:FBI sitting on 'explosive' information regarding Donald Trump and Russia, top Democrat insists
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 88436.html

Was a Trump Server Communicating With Russia?

This spring, a group of computer scientists set out to determine whether hackers were interfering with the Trump campaign. They found something they weren’t expecting.
By Franklin Foer



The greatest miracle of the internet is that it exists—the second greatest is that it persists. Every so often we’re reminded that bad actors wield great skill and have little conscience about the harm they inflict on the world’s digital nervous system. They invent viruses, botnets, and sundry species of malware. There’s good money to be made deflecting these incursions. But a small, tightly knit community of computer scientists who pursue such work—some at cybersecurity firms, some in academia, some with close ties to three-letter federal agencies—is also spurred by a sense of shared idealism and considers itself the benevolent posse that chases off the rogues and rogue states that try to purloin sensitive data and infect the internet with their bugs. “We’re the Union of Concerned Nerds,” in the wry formulation of the Indiana University computer scientist L. Jean Camp.

In late spring, this community of malware hunters placed itself in a high state of alarm. Word arrived that Russian hackers had infiltrated the servers of the Democratic National Committee, an attack persuasively detailed by the respected cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. The computer scientists posited a logical hypothesis, which they set out to rigorously test: If the Russians were worming their way into the DNC, they might very well be attacking other entities central to the presidential campaign, including Donald Trump’s many servers. “We wanted to help defend both campaigns, because we wanted to preserve the integrity of the election,” says one of the academics, who works at a university that asked him not to speak with reporters because of the sensitive nature of his work.



Hunting for malware requires highly specialized knowledge of the intricacies of the domain name system—the protocol that allows us to type email addresses and website names to initiate communication. DNS enables our words to set in motion a chain of connections between servers, which in turn delivers the results we desire. Before a mail server can deliver a message to another mail server, it has to look up its IP address using the DNS. Computer scientists have built a set of massive DNS databases, which provide fragmentary histories of communications flows, in part to create an archive of malware: a kind of catalog of the tricks bad actors have tried to pull, which often involve masquerading as legitimate actors. These databases can give a useful, though far from comprehensive, snapshot of traffic across the internet. Some of the most trusted DNS specialists—an elite group of malware hunters, who work for private contractors—have access to nearly comprehensive logs of communication between servers. They work in close concert with internet service providers, the networks through which most of us connect to the internet, and the ones that are most vulnerable to massive attacks. To extend the traffic metaphor, these scientists have cameras posted on the internet’s stoplights and overpasses. They are entrusted with something close to a complete record of all the servers of the world connecting with one another.

In late July, one of these scientists—who asked to be referred to as Tea Leaves, a pseudonym that would protect his relationship with the networks and banks that employ him to sift their data—found what looked like malware emanating from Russia. The destination domain had Trump in its name, which of course attracted Tea Leaves’ attention. But his discovery of the data was pure happenstance—a surprising needle in a large haystack of DNS lookups on his screen. “I have an outlier here that connects to Russia in a strange way,” he wrote in his notes. He couldn’t quite figure it out at first. But what he saw was a bank in Moscow that kept irregularly pinging a server registered to the Trump Organization on Fifth Avenue.

More data was needed, so he began carefully keeping logs of the Trump server’s DNS activity. As he collected the logs, he would circulate them in periodic batches to colleagues in the cybersecurity world. Six of them began scrutinizing them for clues.



(I communicated extensively with Tea Leaves and two of his closest collaborators, who also spoke with me on the condition of anonymity, since they work for firms trusted by corporations and law enforcement to analyze sensitive data. They persuasively demonstrated some of their analytical methods to me—and showed me two white papers, which they had circulated so that colleagues could check their analysis. I also spoke with academics who vouched for Tea Leaves’ integrity and his unusual access to information. “This is someone I know well and is very well-known in the networking community,” said Camp. “When they say something about DNS, you believe them. This person has technical authority and access to data.”)
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The researchers quickly dismissed their initial fear that the logs represented a malware attack. The communication wasn’t the work of bots. The irregular pattern of server lookups actually resembled the pattern of human conversation—conversations that began during office hours in New York and continued during office hours in Moscow. It dawned on the researchers that this wasn’t an attack, but a sustained relationship between a server registered to the Trump Organization and two servers registered to an entity called Alfa Bank.

The researchers had initially stumbled in their diagnosis because of the odd configuration of Trump’s server. “I’ve never seen a server set up like that,” says Christopher Davis, who runs the cybersecurity firm HYAS InfoSec Inc. and won a FBI Director Award for Excellence for his work tracking down the authors of one of the world’s nastiest botnet attacks. “It looked weird, and it didn’t pass the sniff test.” The server was first registered to Trump’s business in 2009 and was set up to run consumer marketing campaigns. It had a history of sending mass emails on behalf of Trump-branded properties and products. Researchers were ultimately convinced that the server indeed belonged to Trump. (Click here to see the server’s registration record.) But now this capacious server handled a strangely small load of traffic, such a small load that it would be hard for a company to justify the expense and trouble it would take to maintain it. “I get more mail in a day than the server handled,” Davis says.



That wasn’t the only oddity. When the researchers pinged the server, they received error messages. They concluded that the server was set to accept only incoming communication from a very small handful of IP addresses. A small portion of the logs showed communication with a server belonging to Michigan-based Spectrum Health. (The company said in a statement: “Spectrum Health does not have a relationship with Alfa Bank or any of the Trump organizations. We have concluded a rigorous investigation with both our internal IT security specialists and expert cyber security firms. Our experts have conducted a detailed analysis of the alleged internet traffic and did not find any evidence that it included any actual communications (no emails, chat, text, etc.) between Spectrum Health and Alfa Bank or any of the Trump organizations. While we did find a small number of incoming spam marketing emails, they originated from a digital marketing company, Cendyn, advertising Trump Hotels.”)

Spectrum accounted for a relatively trivial portion of the traffic. Eighty-seven percent of the DNS lookups involved the two Alfa Bank servers. “It’s pretty clear that it’s not an open mail server,” Camp told me. “These organizations are communicating in a way designed to block other people out.”



Earlier this month, the group of computer scientists passed the logs to Paul Vixie. In the world of DNS experts, there’s no higher authority. Vixie wrote central strands of the DNS code that makes the internet work. After studying the logs, he concluded, “The parties were communicating in a secretive fashion. The operative word is secretive. This is more akin to what criminal syndicates do if they are putting together a project.” Put differently, the logs suggested that Trump and Alfa had configured something like a digital hotline connecting the two entities, shutting out the rest of the world, and designed to obscure its own existence. Over the summer, the scientists observed the communications trail from a distance.

* * *

While the researchers went about their work, the conventional wisdom about Russian interference in the campaign began to shift. There were reports that the Trump campaign had ordered the Republican Party to rewrite its platform position on Ukraine, maneuvering the GOP toward a policy preferred by Russia, though the Trump campaign denied having a hand in the change. Then Trump announced in an interview with the New York Times his unwillingness to spring to the defense of NATO allies in the face of a Russian invasion. Trump even invited Russian hackers to go hunting for Clinton’s emails, then passed the comment off as a joke. (I wrote about Trump’s relationship with Russia in early July.)

In the face of accusations that he is somehow backed by Putin or in business with Russian investors, Trump has issued categorical statements. “I mean I have nothing to do with Russia,” he told one reporter, a flat denial that he repeated over and over. Of course, it’s possible that these statements are sincere and even correct. The sweeping nature of Trump’s claim, however, prodded the scientists to dig deeper. They were increasingly confident that they were observing data that contradicted Trump’s claims.



In the parlance that has become familiar since the Edward Snowden revelations, the DNS logs reside in the realm of metadata. We can see a trail of transmissions, but we can’t see the actual substance of the communications. And we can’t even say with complete certitude that the servers exchanged email. One scientist, who wasn’t involved in the effort to compile and analyze the logs, ticked off a list of other possibilities: an errant piece of spam caroming between servers, a misdirected email that kept trying to reach its destination, which created the impression of sustained communication. “I’m seeing a preponderance of the evidence, but not a smoking gun,” he said. Richard Clayton, a cybersecurity researcher at Cambridge University who was sent one of the white papers laying out the evidence, acknowledges those objections and the alternative theories but considers them improbable. “I think mail is more likely, because it’s going to a machine running a mail server and [the host] is called mail. Dr. Occam says you should rule out mail before pulling out the more exotic explanations.” After Tea Leaves posted his analysis on Reddit, a security blogger who goes by Krypt3ia expressed initial doubts—but his analysis was tarnished by several incorrect assumptions, and as he examined the matter, his skepticism of Tea Leaves softened somewhat.

I put the question of what kind of activity the logs recorded to the University of California’s Nicholas Weaver, another computer scientist not involved in compiling the logs. “I can't attest to the logs themselves,” he told me, “but assuming they are legitimate they do indicate effectively human-level communication.”

Weaver’s statement raises another uncertainty: Are the logs authentic? Computer scientists are careful about vouching for evidence that emerges from unknown sources—especially since the logs were pasted in a text file, where they could conceivably have been edited. I asked nine computer scientists—some who agreed to speak on the record, some who asked for anonymity—if the DNS logs that Tea Leaves and his collaborators discovered could be forged or manipulated. They considered it nearly impossible. It would be easy enough to fake one or maybe even a dozen records of DNS lookups. But in the aggregate, the logs contained thousands of records, with nuances and patterns that not even the most skilled programmers would be able to recreate on this scale. “The data has got the right kind of fuzz growing on it,” Vixie told me. “It’s the interpacket gap, the spacing between the conversations, the total volume. If you look at those time stamps, they are not simulated. This bears every indication that it was collected from a live link.” I asked him if there was a chance that he was wrong about their authenticity. “This passes the reasonable person test,” he told me. “No reasonable person would come to the conclusion other than the one I’ve come to.” Others were equally emphatic. “It would be really, really hard to fake these,” Davis said. According to Camp, “When the technical community examined the data, the conclusion was pretty obvious.”

It’s possible to impute political motives to the computer scientists, some of whom have criticized Trump on social media. But many of the scientists who talked to me for this story are Republicans. And almost all have strong incentives for steering clear of controversy. Some work at public institutions, where they are vulnerable to political pressure. Others work for firms that rely on government contracts—a relationship that tends to squash positions that could be misinterpreted as outspoken.



The researchers were seeing patterns in the data—and the Trump Organization’s potential interlocutor was itself suggestive. Alfa Bank emerged in the messy post-Soviet scramble to create a private Russian economy. Its founder was a Ukrainian called Mikhail Fridman. He erected his empire in a frenetic rush—in a matter of years, he rose from operating a window washing company to the purchase of the Bolshevik Biscuit Factory to the co-founding of his bank with some friends from university. Fridman could be charmingly open when describing this era. In 2003, he told the Financial Times, “Of course we benefitted from events in the country over the past 10 years. Of course we understand that the distribution of state property was not very objective. … I don’t want to lie and play this game. To say one can be completely clean and transparent is not realistic.”

To build out the bank, Fridman recruited a skilled economist and shrewd operator called Pyotr Aven. In the early ’90s, Aven worked with Vladimir Putin in the St. Petersburg government—and according to several accounts, helped Putin wiggle out of accusations of corruption that might have derailed his ascent. (Karen Dawisha recounts this history in her book Putin’s Kleptocracy.) Over time, Alfa built one of the world’s most lucrative enterprises. Fridman became the second richest man in Russia, valued by Forbes at $15.3 billion.

Alfa’s oligarchs occupied an unusual position in Putin’s firmament. They were insiders but not in the closest ring of power. “It’s like they were his judo pals,” one former U.S. government official who knows Fridman told me. “They were always worried about where they stood in the pecking order and always feared expropriation.” Fridman and Aven, however, are adept at staying close to power. As the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia once ruled, in the course of dismissing a libel suit the bankers filed, “Aven and Fridman have assumed an unforeseen level of prominence and influence in the economic and political affairs of their nation.”



Unlike other Russian firms, Alfa has operated smoothly and effortlessly in the West. It has never been slapped with sanctions. Fridman and Aven have cultivated a reputation as beneficent philanthropists. They endowed a prestigious fellowship. The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the American-government funded think tank, gave Aven its award for “Corporate Citizenship” in 2015. To protect its interests in Washington, Alfa hired as its lobbyist former Reagan administration official Ed Rogers. Richard Burt, who helped Trump write the speech in which he first laid out his foreign policy, serves on Alfa’s senior advisory board. The branding campaign has worked well. During the first Obama term, Fridman and Aven met with officials in the White House on two occasions, according to visitor logs.

Fridman and Aven have significant business interests to promote in the West. One of their holding companies, LetterOne, has vowed to invest as much as $3 billion in U.S. health care. This year, it sank $200 million into Uber. This is, of course, money that might otherwise be invested in Russia. According to a former U.S. official, Putin tolerates this condition because Alfa advances Russian interests. It promotes itself as an avatar of Russian prowess. “It’s our moral duty to become a global player, to prove a Russian can transform into an international businessman,” Fridman told the Financial Times.

* * *

Tea Leaves and his colleagues plotted the data from the logs on a timeline. What it illustrated was suggestive: The conversation between the Trump and Alfa servers appeared to follow the contours of political happenings in the United States. “At election-related moments, the traffic peaked,” according to Camp. There were considerably more DNS lookups, for instance, during the two conventions.


Start: DNS lookup history start date.

RFC from Alfa-Bank: Alfa-Bank rep provided with 2 ips, hostname, count.

Errors: 4:11am UTC: DNS lookup errors Trump-Email.com.

Errors: 1:12am UTC: DNS lookup errors Trump-Email.com.

Taken down: 9:53am EST USA time: Trump-Email.com deleted from Trump authoritative name server zone.



In September, the scientists tried to get the public to pay attention to their data. One of them posted a link to the logs in a Reddit thread. Soon, the New York Times’ Eric Lichtblau and Steven Lee Myers began chasing the story. (They are still pursuing it.) Lichtblau met with a Washington representative of Alfa Bank on Sept. 21, and the bank denied having any connection to Trump. (Lichtblau told me that Times policy prevents him from commenting on his reporting.)

The Times hadn’t yet been in touch with the Trump campaign—Lichtblau spoke with the campaign a week later—but shortly after it reached out to Alfa, the Trump domain name in question seemed to suddenly stop working. When the scientists looked up the host, the DNS server returned a fail message, evidence that it no longer functioned. Or as it is technically diagnosed, it had “SERVFAILed.” (On the timeline above, this is the moment at the end of the chronology when the traffic abruptly spikes, as servers frantically attempt to resend rejected messages.) The computer scientists believe there was one logical conclusion to be drawn: The Trump Organization shut down the server after Alfa was told that the Times might expose the connection. Weaver told me the Trump domain was “very sloppily removed.” Or as another of the researchers put it, it looked like “the knee was hit in Moscow, the leg kicked in New York.”



Four days later, on Sept. 27, the Trump Organization created a new host name, trump1.contact-client.com, which enabled communication to the very same server via a different route. When a new host name is created, the first communication with it is never random. To reach the server after the resetting of the host name, the sender of the first inbound mail has to first learn of the name somehow. It’s simply impossible to randomly reach a renamed server. “That party had to have some kind of outbound message through SMS, phone, or some noninternet channel they used to communicate [the new configuration],” Paul Vixie told me. The first attempt to look up the revised host name came from Alfa Bank. “If this was a public server, we would have seen other traces,” Vixie says. “The only look-ups came from this particular source.”

According to Vixie and others, the new host name may have represented an attempt to establish a new channel of communication. But media inquiries into the nature of Trump’s relationship with Alfa Bank, which suggested that their communications were being monitored, may have deterred the parties from using it. Soon after the New York Times began to ask questions, the traffic between the servers stopped cold.

* * *

Last week, I wrote to Alfa Bank asking if it could explain why its servers attempted to connect with the Trump Organization on such a regular basis. Its Washington representative, Jeffrey Birnbaum of the public relations firm BGR, provided me the following response:

Alfa hired Mandiant, one of the world's foremost cyber security experts, to investigate and it has found nothing to the allegations. I hope the below answers respond clearly to your questions. Neither Alfa Bank nor its principals, including Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven, have or have had any contact with Mr. Trump or his organizations. Fridman and Aven have never met Mr. Trump nor have they or Alfa Bank had any business dealings with him. Neither Alfa nor its officers have sent Mr. Trump or his organizations any emails, information or money. Alfa Bank does not have and has never had any special or exclusive internet connection with Mr. Trump or his entities. The assertion of a special or private link is patently false.

I asked Birnbaum if he would connect me with Mandiant to elaborate on its findings. He told me:

Mandiant is still doing its deep dive into the Alfa Bank systems. Its leading theory is that Alfa Bank's servers may have been responding with common DNS look ups to spam sent to it by a marketing server. But it doesn't want to speak on the record until it's finished its investigation.

It’s hard to evaluate the findings of an investigation that hasn’t ended. And of course, even the most reputable firm in the world isn’t likely to loudly broadcast an opinion that bites the hand of its client.

I posed the same basic questions to the Trump campaign. Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks sent me this in response to my questions by email:

The email server, set up for marketing purposes and operated by a third-party, has not been used since 2010. The current traffic on the server from Alphabank's [sic] IP address is regular DNS server traffic—not email traffic. To be clear, The Trump Organization is not sending or receiving any communications from this email server. The Trump Organization has no communication or relationship with this entity or any Russian entity.

I asked Hicks to explain what caused the Trump Organization to rename its host after the New York Times called Alfa. I also asked how the Trump Organization arrived at its judgment that there was no email traffic. (Furthermore, there’s no such thing as “regular” DNS server traffic, at least not according to the computer scientists I consulted. The very reason DNS exists is to enable email and other means of communication.) She never provided me with a response.

What the scientists amassed wasn’t a smoking gun. It’s a suggestive body of evidence that doesn’t absolutely preclude alternative explanations. But this evidence arrives in the broader context of the campaign and everything else that has come to light: The efforts of Donald Trump’s former campaign manager to bring Ukraine into Vladimir Putin’s orbit; the other Trump adviser whose communications with senior Russian officials have worried intelligence officials; the Russian hacking of the DNC and John Podesta’s email.

We don’t yet know what this server was for, but it deserves further explanation.

FBI Making Inquiry Into Ex-Trump Campaign Manager's Foreign Ties
by KEN DILANIAN, CYNTHIA MCFADDEN, WILLIAM M. ARKIN and TOM WINTER

The FBI has been conducting a preliminary inquiry into Donald Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort's foreign business connections, law enforcement and intelligence sources told NBC News Monday.

Word of the inquiry, which has not blossomed into a full-blown criminal investigation, comes just days after FBI Director James Comey's disclosure that his agency is examining a new batch of emails connected to an aide to Hillary Clinton.

And it comes a day after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid criticized Comey's revelation and asserted that Comey possesses "explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government."

The FBI did not comment. Manafort told NBC News "none of it is true ... There's no investigation going on by the FBI that I'm aware of." He said he had never had ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin, or had dealings with Putin and his government. He said any suggestion of such ties was "Democratic propaganda."

"This is all political propaganda, meant to deflect," he said.

NBC News reported in August that Manafort was a key player in multi-million-dollar business propositions with Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs — one of them a close Putin ally with alleged ties to organized crime — which foreign policy experts said raised questions about the pro-Russian bent of the Trump candidacy.

PlayTrump Campaign Chair Faces Questions on Pro-Russia Ties
Trump Campaign Chair Faces Questions on Pro-Russia Ties 6:50
A few days later, amid other reporting on Manafort's Ukraine ties, Manafort was ousted from the campaign.

Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, regularly receives sensitive briefings. Schiff said he could not discuss Reid's assertions, but he said, "Americans have every right to be concerned about what they see in terms of Trump advisors and their closeness with the Kremlin, Trump's policies vis-a-vis Russia, Trump's potential financial interest, all of those things ought to be of deep concern to voters."

He added, "Whether an investigation is appropriate depends on whether there's evidence of criminal connections. Of course the intelligence community wants to know what foreign influence Russia may be looking to exert in the United States."

Manafort was paid millions of dollars — $12.7 million in cash, according to The New York Times—representing a pro-Russian politician in the Ukraine.


Manafort's name in an alleged payment ledger. The Times
Trump has taken a series of pro-Russian positions that experts from both parties say are far outside the mainstream, and inexplicable from a political viewpoint. He continues to cast doubt on Russian involvement in election hacking, for example, despite the intelligence community's public assessment.

"The relationships that Trump's advisors have had with pro-Russian forces are deeply disturbing," David Kramer, a former senior State Department official in the George W. Bush administration and a former adviser to Marco Rubio's presidential campaign, told NBC News in August. "Trump's attitude on Russia is not in line with most Republican foreign-policy thinking. Trump has staked out views that are really on the fringe."

An FBI inquiry is a preliminary examination that falls short of a criminal investigation. But in this highly charged atmosphere, it has some arguing that Comey is applying a double standard.

"Any specifics of what the FBI or intelligence agencies may be looking at are not something that the bureau should be discussing publicly," Schiff said. "But here, where the director has discussed an investigation involving one candidate, it opens the director up to claims of bias if he doesn't discuss other potential investigations."
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/fbi ... es-n675881

Paul Manafort tricked Trump into switching from Christie to Pence by faking airplane malfunction
David Edwards DAVID EDWARDS
30 OCT 2016 AT 16:13 ET

Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, reportedly bamboozled his boss into switching his vice presidential pick from embattled New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) to Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) by staging an airplane malfunction.

In July, The New York Times reported that Trump and Pence “impromptu dinner” after the GOP candidate’s plane was grounded by “mechanical problems.”

“And at some point during the evening, Mr. Trump asked Mr. Pence if he would say yes, were Mr. Trump to offer him the No. 2 slot,” according to the Times.

But a Sunday report in the New York Post revealed that Manafort took the dramatic step of lying to Trump about mechanical problems with the plane after his boss tentatively selected Christie for the V.P. slot.

“Trump had wanted Christie but Bridgegate would have been the biggest national story,” Trump source told the Post. “He’d lose the advantage of not being corrupt.”

Manafort left the campaign in August after question arose about his business ties with Russia.
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/10/paul-ma ... lfunction/

MONDAY, OCT 24, 2016 07:43 AM CDT
Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was lobbying Vladimir Putin through a company he owned
EyeLock, owned by two Trump aides, sought to do business in Moscow
MATTHEW ROZSA

Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was lobbying Vladimir Putin through a company he owned
Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort walks around the convention floor before the opening session of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Monday, July 18, 2016. (Credit: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
More information has come out highlighting possible troubling connections of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to the Vladimir Putin regime in Russia.

The New York Post reported that, according to sources, former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and ex-”core” aide Rick Gates have financial ties to a biometric security company that lobbied the Putin administration on behalf of technology that would help it spy on its citizens.

Manafort was a major early investor for EyeLock and owned as much as 10 percent in the company, according to the Post, while Gates served as an independent contractor hired to build business for it in Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

EyeLock uses iris-scanning technology to identify individuals, according to its website. The company had a failed bid to put machines in the Moscow subway to scan as many as 50 people a minute to find matches with those on watch lists.

This isn’t the first time that Manafort and Gates have been reported as having pro-Putin ties. In August, Manafort was pressured into resigning after news stories indicated that he had lobbied on behalf of a Ukrainian president sympathetic to Putin, Viktor Yanukovich. Gates resigned shortly after that.

“It raises a lot of questions about national security and what should have been publicly disclosed to get a better handle on ties between the Trump campaign and the Russian government,” a White House official told the New York Post about Manafort’s lobbying ties.

Trump’s potential ties to the Putin regime have been a significant issue in this presidential election. Trump has taken fire for praising Putin, most notably in September when he said, “He’s been a leader far more than our president has been a leader.”

In July, when the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s emails made headlines, Trump seemed to encourage Russia to continue sabotaging the party of his opponent: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.” Trump delegates also fought to insert pro-Russia planks into the Republican Party platform at its national convention in July.
http://www.salon.com/2016/10/24/donald- ... -he-owned/

A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump
Has the bureau investigated this material?

DAVID CORNOCT. 31, 2016 7:52 PM


Carlo Allegri/ZUMA
On Friday, FBI Director James Comey set off a political blast when he informed congressional leaders that the bureau had stumbled across emails that might be pertinent to its completed inquiry into Hillary Clinton's handling of emails when she was secretary of state. The Clinton campaign and others criticized Comey for intervening in a presidential campaign by breaking with Justice Department tradition and revealing information about an investigation—information that was vague and perhaps ultimately irrelevant—so close to Election Day. On Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid upped the ante. He sent Comey a fiery letter saying the FBI chief may have broken the law and pointed to a potentially greater controversy: "In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government…The public has a right to know this information."

Reid's missive set off a burst of speculation on Twitter and elsewhere. What was he referring to regarding the Republican presidential nominee? At the end of August, Reid had written to Comey and demanded an investigation of the "connections between the Russian government and Donald Trump's presidential campaign," and in that letter he indirectly referred to Carter Page, an American businessman cited by Trump as one of his foreign policy advisers, who had financial ties to Russia and had recently visited Moscow. Last month, Yahoo News reported that US intelligence officials were probing the links between Page and senior Russian officials. (Page has called accusations against him "garbage.") On Monday, NBC News reported that the FBI has mounted a preliminary inquiry into the foreign business ties of Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign chief. But Reid's recent note hinted at more than the Page or Manafort affairs. And a former senior intelligence officer for a Western country who specialized in Russian counterintelligence tells Mother Jones that in recent months he provided the bureau with memos, based on his recent interactions with Russian sources, contending the Russian government has for years tried to co-opt and assist Trump—and that the FBI requested more information from him.

"This is something of huge significance, way above party politics," the former intelligence officer says. "I think [Trump's] own party should be aware of this stuff as well."
Does this mean the FBI is investigating whether Russian intelligence has attempted to develop a secret relationship with Trump or cultivate him as an asset? Was the former intelligence officer and his material deemed credible or not? An FBI spokeswoman says, "Normally, we don't talk about whether we are investigating anything." But a senior US government official not involved in this case but familiar with the former spy tells Mother Jones that he has been a credible source with a proven record of providing reliable, sensitive, and important information to the US government.

In June, the former Western intelligence officer—who spent almost two decades on Russian intelligence matters and who now works with a US firm that gathers information on Russia for corporate clients—was assigned the task of researching Trump's dealings in Russia and elsewhere, according to the former spy and his associates in this American firm. This was for an opposition research project originally financed by a Republican client critical of the celebrity mogul. (Before the former spy was retained, the project's financing switched to a client allied with Democrats.) "It started off as a fairly general inquiry," says the former spook, who asks not to be identified. But when he dug into Trump, he notes, he came across troubling information indicating connections between Trump and the Russian government. According to his sources, he says, "there was an established exchange of information between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin of mutual benefit."

This was, the former spy remarks, "an extraordinary situation." He regularly consults with US government agencies on Russian matters, and near the start of July on his own initiative—without the permission of the US company that hired him—he sent a report he had written for that firm to a contact at the FBI, according to the former intelligence officer and his American associates, who asked not to be identified. (He declines to identify the FBI contact.) The former spy says he concluded that the information he had collected on Trump was "sufficiently serious" to share with the FBI.

Mother Jones has reviewed that report and other memos this former spy wrote. The first memo, based on the former intelligence officer's conversations with Russian sources, noted, "Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years. Aim, endorsed by PUTIN, has been to encourage splits and divisions in western alliance." It maintained that Trump "and his inner circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his Democratic and other political rivals." It claimed that Russian intelligence had "compromised" Trump during his visits to Moscow and could "blackmail him." It also reported that Russian intelligence had compiled a dossier on Hillary Clinton based on "bugged conversations she had on various visits to Russia and intercepted phone calls."

The former intelligence officer says the response from the FBI was "shock and horror." The FBI, after receiving the first memo, did not immediately request additional material, according to the former intelligence officer and his American associates. Yet in August, they say, the FBI asked him for all information in his possession and for him to explain how the material had been gathered and to identify his sources. The former spy forwarded to the bureau several memos—some of which referred to members of Trump's inner circle. After that point, he continued to share information with the FBI. "It's quite clear there was or is a pretty substantial inquiry going on," he says.

"This is something of huge significance, way above party politics," the former intelligence officer comments. "I think [Trump's] own party should be aware of this stuff as well."

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment regarding the memos. In the past, Trump has declared, "I have nothing to do with Russia."

The FBI is certainly investigating the hacks attributed to Russia that have hit American political targets, including the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta, the chairman of Clinton's presidential campaign. But there have been few public signs of whether that probe extends to examining possible contacts between the Russian government and Trump. (In recent weeks, reporters in Washington have pursued anonymous online reports that a computer server related to the Trump Organization engaged in a high level of activity with servers connected to Alfa Bank, the largest private bank in Russia. On Monday, a Slate investigation detailed the pattern of unusual server activity but concluded, "We don't yet know what this [Trump] server was for, but it deserves further explanation." In an email to Mother Jones, Hope Hicks, a Trump campaign spokeswoman, maintains, "The Trump Organization is not sending or receiving any communications from this email server. The Trump Organization has no communication or relationship with this entity or any Russian entity.")

According to several national security experts, there is widespread concern in the US intelligence community that Russian intelligence, via hacks, is aiming to undermine the presidential election—to embarrass the United States and delegitimize its democratic elections. And the hacks appear to have been designed to benefit Trump. In August, Democratic members of the House committee on oversight wrote Comey to ask the FBI to investigate "whether connections between Trump campaign officials and Russian interests may have contributed to these [cyber] attacks in order to interfere with the US. presidential election." In September, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Adam Schiff, the senior Democrats on, respectively, the Senate and House intelligence committees, issued a joint statement accusing Russia of underhanded meddling: "Based on briefings we have received, we have concluded that the Russian intelligence agencies are making a serious and concerted effort to influence the U.S. election. At the least, this effort is intended to sow doubt about the security of our election and may well be intended to influence the outcomes of the election." The Obama White House has declared Russia the culprit in the hacking capers, expressed outrage, and promised a "proportional" response.

There's no way to tell whether the FBI has confirmed or debunked any of the allegations contained in the former spy's memos. But a Russian intelligence attempt to co-opt or cultivate a presidential candidate would mark an even more serious operation than the hacking.

In the letter Reid sent to Comey on Sunday, he pointed out that months ago he had asked the FBI director to release information on Trump's possible Russia ties. Since then, according to a Reid spokesman, Reid has been briefed several times. The spokesman adds, "He is confident that he knows enough to be extremely alarmed."
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... nald-trump