The Alfa Bank hoax:

A conspiracy to manufacture the illusion of a secret communications channel between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization, only to later be "discovered" as evidence of possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign

In mid-to-late June 2016, a group of "self-appointed guardians of the Internet" began to investigate whether Republicans, like the DNC, had been hacked by Russians.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/15/was-there-a-connection-between-a-russian-bank-and-the-trump-campaign

Around late June 2016, unusually frequent DNS activity between Alfa Bank and a server affiliated with the Trump Organization was detected, allegedly indicating a connection between persons connected to the Trump campaign and Russia.

https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2020-04/Ankura_AlfaBank_ResearchAnalysis_Apr2020dh.pdf.pdf.pdf

Sometime in the summer of 2016, one of Michael Sussmann's clients became aware of this activity.

https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/ms53.pdf

Christopher Steele says that on July 29, 2016, Sussmann told him about this activity.

https://dailycaller.com/2020/04/27/christopher-steele-dossier-alfa-bank-perkins-coie

Steele says that Sussmann told him that the FBI had been informed about this activity in July 2016.

https://www.scribd.com/document/458992503/Steele-deposition

A cybersecurity expert, "Tea Leaves," apparently had passed this information on to one of Fusion's clients in late July 2016.

https://www.scribd.com/document/458992503/Steele-deposition

Another computer scientist, "Max," told the NYT's Eric Lichtblau about this DNS activity sometime in August 2016.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/15/was-there-a-connection-between-a-russian-bank-and-the-trump-campaign/

On August 22, 2016, Glenn Simpson told Bruce Ohr that Sergei Millian (Russian-American Chamber of Commerce) and Sergey Yatsenko (Global Energy Capital LLC) were potential intermediaries between Russia and the Trump campaign.

https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2019/o20012.pdf
https://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/JW-v-DOJ-Ohr-302s-02107-1.pdf

In late August 2016, the FBI had apparently opened a counterintelligence case on Sergei Millian.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BJuCpdPD-MF/ 

According to notes taken by Bruce Ohr on September 23, 2016, Steele alleged that someone at Sergei Millian's Russian-American Chamber of Commerce had used Alfa Bank's server sometime in early September 2016.

https://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/JW-v-DOJ-Ohr-302s-02107-1.pdf
https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2019/o20012.pdf

Steele, however, disputes this.

He even suggested that Simpson was Ohr's actual source for the rumor about Millian.

https://www.scribd.com/document/458992503/Steele-deposition

Carter Page seems to have suggested that on September 9, 2016, during a closed-door meeting at the Broadcasting Board of Governors, that he was personally brought up as a topic of discussion.

https://www.usagm.gov/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Closed-Meeting-Notice-9-9-2016.pdf

On September 14, 2016, Steele produced Memo 112. This memo alleged that the Alfa Group (parent company of Alfa Bank):

1) was using an intermediary to send messages to Vladimir Putin

2) had used the same intermediary during the 1990's to send cash bribes to Putin

As the AP notes, Memo 112 was an unusual deviation from the rest of Steele's election reporting.

It was the only memo (out of the 17) that didn't contain a single reference to the 2016 U.S. election.

https://apnews.com/55b8a55d5a7545b99d0f915affb7d852

In any case, Steele got taken to the woodshed over the many obvious falsehoods in Memo 112.

https://www.scribd.com/document/458992503/Steele-deposition

On September 21, 2016, the NYT's Eric Lichtblau contacted the offices of BGR Group, who represented Alfa Bank.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/10/was_a_server_registered_to_the_trump_organization_communicating_with_russia.html

According to Alfa Bank, Lichtblau told BGR Group that he had evidence of unusual DNS activity between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization.

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3899717/Benczkowksi-Alfa-Bank.pdf

On September 22, 2016, Hillary tweeted out an election video that contained a clip of Sergei Millian being interviewed by ABC's Brian Ross, which had aired earlier that day on Good Morning America.

https://archive.org/details/KTNV_20160922_140000_Good_Morning_America/start/2137/end/2197?q=millian https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/779055195607166977

On September 23, 2016, Yahoo! News published "U.S. intel officials probe ties between Trump adviser and Kremlin"

https://news.yahoo.com/u-s-intel-officials-probe-ties-between-trump-adviser-and-kremlin-175046002.html

On September 24, 2016, Carter Page was formally removed from his role as a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign.

https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf

On September 25, 2016, Carter Page sent a letter to Director Comey, alleging that recent public reporting about him was inaccurate, and that he would welcome a visit by the FBI to set the record straight.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/r/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2016/09/26/Editorial-Opinion/Graphics/2016.09.25_FBI_letter.pdf

On September 28, 2016, Michael Cohen told the Financial Times's Catherine Belton that Millian had never had a business relationship with Trump.

https://vault.fbi.gov/special-counsel-mueller-investigation-records/special-counsel-mueller-investigation-records-part-01-of-07/view

In late September 2016, the FBI asked the NYT's Eric Lichtblau to hold off on publication of his story about Alfa Bank, saying that it could jeopardize an ongoing investigation.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/15/was-there-a-connection-between-a-russian-bank-and-the-trump-campaign/

Sometime in September 2016, the FBI's investigation into a possible backchannel between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization was reportedly closed.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/us/politics/fbi-russia-election-donald-trump.html

In either late September or early October 2016, Carter Page was apparently contacted by a representative from the CIA.

On October 3, 2016, Steele provided information to the FBI on Yatsenko that seems to have matched Simpson's earlier reporting from back in August 2016.

https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2019/o20012.pdf

On October 4, 2016, Carter Page reportedly received the first of several death threats from Oklahoma.

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5720862/Notice-other.pdf

On October 5, 2016, Carter Page met with Lichtblau's co-author at the Times, Steven Lee Myers.

Page seems to suggest that his early October 2016 meeting with Myers had helped persuade the New York Times not to play up the Alfa Bank story that Lichtblau was working on.

https://www.nytimes.com/by/steven-lee-myers

On October 11, 2016, Steele, Tatianna Duran (Orbis), and Jonathan Winer had a meeting at the State Department with Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec.

https://www.scribd.com/document/409364009/Kavalec-Less-Redacted-Memo
https://www.scribd.com/document/458992503/Steele-deposition

At the meeting, Steele told Kavalec that Millian was connected to Simon Kukes, a Russian-American businessman who used to manage Yukos Oil Company and TNK.

https://www.scribd.com/document/409363897/State-Department-handwritten-notes-of-meeting-with-Christopher-Steele
https://www.scribd.com/document/409364009/Kavalec-Less-Redacted-Memo

On October 12, 2016, Kavalec had reportedly asked Winer to help retrieve a document that was discussed in their meeting the prior day.

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/finance/steele-state-and-alfa-bank-conspiracy-theory-exposed

The document, which Kavalec had reportedly forwarded to FBI official Stephen Laycock the next day, claimed that "network logs show a distinctively human pattern of communication between a server dedicated for use by the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank."

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/finance/steele-state-and-alfa-bank-conspiracy-theory-exposed

According to the BBC, the FBI was allegedly granted a FISA warrant on October 15, 2016, in order to monitor two Russian banks suspected of financing the 2016 U.S. election.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38589427

"I can tell you that on October 17, 2016, I went to the FBI and asked about Steele's Alfa Bank intelligence. The FBI knocked this down in October. They told me on October 17 that it had been ruled out as credible intelligence."

John Solomon (5/21/2019)

In (late?) October 2016, Sussmann says he reached out to reporters from the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Slate about the unusual activity at Alfa Bank.

https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/ms53.pdf

On October 31, 2016, Slate published "Was a Trump Server Communicating with Russia?"

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/10/was_a_server_registered_to_the_trump_organization_communicating_with_russia.html

Several hours later, the New York Times published "Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia."

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/us/politics/fbi-russia-election-donald-trump.html

"The Clinton camp tweeted a link to Slate last night, suggesting that one of Trump Tower's computer servers has communicated with Russia's Alfa Bank. Jake Sullivan called it the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow."

Fox News (11/1/2016)

https://archive.org/details/FOXNEWSW_20161101_220000_Special_Report_With_Bret_Baier/start/720/end/780

On November 7, 2016, Heat Street published "EXCLUSIVE: FBI 'Granted FISA Warrant' Covering Trump Camp's Ties to Russia"

http://archive.li/xFqPB 

(Heat Street may have retained Fusion's services during the 2016 election.) https://twitter.com/walkafyre/status/1254829907496091648

In December 2016, Sussmann says he cold-called the General Counsel of the CIA to see about sharing information he had about possible connections between Russia and the Trump Organization.

https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/ms53.pdf

By early February 2017, the FBI had concluded that there were no cyber links between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization.

https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2019/o20012.pdf

Also in early February 2017, Sussmann says he again went to the General Counsel of the CIA to share possible connections between Russia and the Trump Organization.

https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/ms53.pdf

On February 10, 2017, John Podesta met with Fusion's Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, as well as former Feinstein staffer Daniel Jones to discuss raising funds in order to investigate Russian interference during the 2016 election.

https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/jp239.pdf
https://www.linkedin.com/in/danieljjones/

"That investigation into the two Russian banks, as far as we know, is still pending. Everything reported by the Post and the Times in the last couple days indicates that some of these leaks are coming from that investigation."

Mark Levin Show (2/15/2017)

On February 18, 2017, cybersecurity company Stroz Friedberg began monitoring and capturing newly-restarted DNS activity between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization.

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3899717/Benczkowksi-Alfa-Bank.pdf

On February 27, 2017, a USIC report said that Millian, inter alia, had no known access to Russian intelligence, according to footnote 350 from the December 2019 IG report.

https://www.grassley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/2020-04-15%20ODNI%20to%20CEG%20RHJ%20%28FISA%20Footnote%20Declassification%29.pdf

On March 3, 2017, Breitbart laid out arguments from the Mark Levin Show that the Obama administration had sabotaged the incoming Trump administration.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/03/03/mark-levin-obama-used-police-state-tactics-undermine-trump/

On March 4, 2017, Trump tweeted that Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower during the election.

"These reports claim that last June, there was a FISA request to monitor communications involving then-candidate Trump and some campaign officials. It was reportedly turned down, but then, in October, it was reportedly renewed."

Kristin Fisher (3/4/2017)

https://archive.org/details/FOXNEWSW_20170304_170000_Americas_News_HQ/start/176/end/236?q=levin

"Robert Costa, who writes for the Washington Post, confirmed that several people at the White House are circulating this Breitbart story."

Joy Ann Reid (3/4/2017)

https://archive.org/details/MSNBCW_20170304_150000_AM_Joy/start/240/end/300

"The President's allegations are apparently based on previous reports by radio provocateur Mark Levin."

Smerconish (3/4/2017)

https://archive.org/details/CNNW_20170304_230000_Smerconish/start/240/end/300

"Who they said was named in these warrants, that varied greatly. Heat Street said that Trump was named specifically. The others were saying, well, maybe it was some individuals associated with him or the campaign."

Dana Loesch (3/5/2017)

https://archive.org/details/CNNW_20170305_140000_State_of_the_Union_With_Jake_Tapper/start/2137/end/2197?q=%22heat+street%22+

"His information appears to have come from conservative radio hosts and websites, and the basis for their story from the BBC, the Guardian, and the new British website called Heat Street"

Anderson Cooper (3/6/2017)

https://archive.org/details/CNNW_20170307_050000_Anderson_Cooper_360/start/120/end/180

"According to Heat Street, in October 2016, the Obama administration went to the FISA court to get a warrant to monitor U.S. persons in Donald Trump's campaign with ties to Russia. This was part of a larger probe into Russian banks."

Hannity (3/6/2017)

https://archive.org/details/FOXNEWSW_20170307_060000_Hannity/start/249/end/309?q=%22heat+street%22+

"My office at the IBM Building (590 Madison Avenue) is literally connected to the Trump Tower building by an atrium. So if surveillance was indeed undertaken against me and others, it should be essentially deemed as a proven fact."

Carter Page (3/8/2017)

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3515599/2017-03-08-Letter-to-Intel-Comm-Re-TT-Surveil.pdf

"The server the FBI monitored was actually located away from Trump Tower. They went into the server, but they did not use the FISA to do that. They did, however, have a FISA in October at the exact same time as this investigation."

Sara Carter (3/8/2017)

https://archive.org/details/FOXNEWSW_20170309_060000_Hannity/start/540/end/600

"We think the other FISA had to do with looking at connections between then-candidate Trump and the banks in Russia. What we don't know is, who was connected to that FISA. Nobody wants to talk about that particular FISA right now."

Sara Carter (3/8/2017)

https://archive.org/details/FOXNEWSW_20170309_060000_Hannity/start/576/end/636?q=alpha+bank+trump

"Well, Wolf, we've learned that FBI investigators and computer scientists continue to examine whether there was a computer connection between the Trump Organization and a Russian bank called Alfa Bank."

Pamela Brown (3/9/2017)

https://archive.org/details/CNNW_20170309_220000_Situation_Room_With_Wolf_Blitzer/start/540/end/600

"This is the same server mentioned in a Breitbart article that a White House official says sparked President Trump's series of tweets last saturday accusing investigators of tapping his phone."

Pamela Brown (3/9/2017)

https://archive.org/details/CNNW_20170309_220000_Situation_Room_With_Wolf_Blitzer/start/540/end/600

"A group of particular computer scientists who obtained these leaked internet records, records that frankly were never ever supposed to be made public. They were puzzled as to why this Russian bank was doing this."

Jose Pagliery (3/10/2017)

https://archive.org/details/CNNW_20170310_140000_CNN_Newsroom_With_Poppy_Harlow_and_John_Berman/start/360/end/420

On March 10, 2017, the cybersecurity expert, "Tea Leaves," refused to be interviewed by CNN, and was reportedly "hiding under a rock."

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/03/09/politics/fbi-investigation-continues-into-odd-computer-link-between-russian-bank-and-trump-organization/index.html

On March 16, 2017, the White House Counsel's Office was briefed on the FBI's targets in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, including Carter Page ("$ game").

https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf

"Take a look at the story's evolution: a week before the election, headlines that Donald Trump has a secret backdoor to the Kremlin. Then we find out it's advanced by someone with a Hillary Clinton sentiment."

John Solomon (3/16/2017)

h/t @ThunderStrzok1

"Very serious computer science experts had uncovered this secret hotline between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization. We knew that, given how serious these computer scientists were, they weren't just making up crackpot theories."

Jake Sullivan (3/17/17)

https://archive.org/details/CNNW_20170317_210000_Situation_Room_With_Wolf_Blitzer/start/1020/end/1080

"So what Alfa Bank did was, they put something inside their computer server in order to track and trace if these DNS requests happened again, and it did. It happened in February, and then again on March 11 and March 13."

Sara Carter (3/17/2017)

https://archive.org/details/FOXNEWSW_20170318_090000_Hannity/start/2340/end/2400

"These stories were published after select media outlets received highly confidential and highly private DNS logs, which appear to have been obtained in an unauthorized or improper manner by an individual known only as Tea Leaves"

Viet Dinh (7/21/2017)

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3899717/Benczkowksi-Alfa-Bank.pdf

"Last fall, there were some allegations of unusual sets of data streams going to Alfa Bank servers from a server linked to the Trump Organization. That got reported, and then sort of exaggerated as a server inside Trump Tower."

Charlie Savage (7/25/2017)

https://archive.org/details/MSNBCW_20170725_150000_MSNBC_Live_With_Velshi_and_Ruhle/start/3480/end/3540

"There was a server that had the Trump name on it, but it was not controlled by the Trump Organization. It was controlled by an email marketing firm, a spam company, essentially, spamming out emails about Trump properties."

Charlie Savage (7/25/2017)

https://archive.org/details/MSNBCW_20170725_150000_MSNBC_Live_With_Velshi_and_Ruhle/start/3480/end/3540

"Alfa Bank featured prominently in a controversy last year concerning unexplained communications during the presidential campaign between computer servers connected to Alfa Bank and servers connected to the Trump Organization."

Maddow (7/26/2017)

https://archive.org/details/MSNBCW_20170727_040000_The_Rachel_Maddow_Show/start/540/end/600

Durbin: What would you say about the suspicion that there was some communication between Alfa Bank and the Trump campaign?

Browder: I only know about that from what I've read in the press, which is not enough to make a judgment.

Bill Browder (7/30/2017)

https://archive.org/details/CSPAN_20170730_182200_William_Browder_Overturning_Magnitsky_Act_is_Putins_Top_Priority/start/4929/end/4989?q=alpha+bank+trump

"Alfa Bank now believes that they were hacked. They believe that those pings were actually generated by somebody who hacked into their server to make it appear that their bank's server was in communication with Trump's server."

Sara Carter (9/20/2017)

https://archive.org/details/FOXNEWSW_20170921_050000_Hannity/start/2100/end/2160

"In the spring of 2016, a computer server from the Trump Organization started communicating with unusual frequency, and almost exclusively, with a server from Alfa Bank. We have no idea what was going on with that communication."

Maddow (1/10/2018)

https://archive.org/details/MSNBCW_20180111_050000_The_Rachel_Maddow_Show/start/875/end/935?q=alpha+bank+trump

"You might remember that ultimately sort of baffling reporting about unexplained communications during the election between computer servers in Russia linked to Alfa Bank, and a server in Trump Tower linked to the Trump Organization"

Maddow (2/21/2018)

https://archive.org/details/MSNBCW_20180222_050000_The_Rachel_Maddow_Show/start/240/end/300

"There are a lot of dots here that are tantalizingly driving me to jump to some conclusions. Why was the Trump Tower server communicating with Alfa Bank? What were they transmitting? Is it possible they were transmitting data?"

Evelyn Farkas (3/19/2018)

https://archive.org/details/MSNBCW_20180319_170000_MSNBC_Live_With_Craig_Melvin/start/2232/end/2292?q=alpha+bank+trump

"Those electronic communications between the servers for Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization during the campign, those are as yet still unexplained."

Maddow (7/10/2018)

https://archive.org/details/MSNBCW_20180711_040000_The_Rachel_Maddow_Show/start/1148/end/1208?q=%22alfa+bank%22

"Why was the Alfa Bank server talking to the Trump Organization server? We still don't know what that computer traffic was about."

Maddow (8/20/2018)

https://archive.org/details/MSNBCW_20180821_010000_The_Rachel_Maddow_Show/start/360/end/420

On October 8, 2018, the New Yorker published "Was there a connection between a Russian Bank and the Trump campaign?"

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/15/was-there-a-connection-between-a-russian-bank-and-the-trump-campaign/

"Just before the election, on October 31, 2016, Franklin Foer published this fascinating and very controversial piece at Slate, and honestly, it has been driving me nuts ever since."

Maddow (10/9/2018)

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/media-too-quick-to-dismiss-trump-alfa-bank-server-contact-story-1340580419929

"Turns out, that at the same time that Foer was pursuing this story, Eric Lichtblau at the Times learned that the FBI had an open counterintelligence investigation underway into people associated with then-candidate Trump, and Russia."

Maddow (10/9/2018)

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/media-too-quick-to-dismiss-trump-alfa-bank-server-contact-story-1340580419929

"Oh, which means, before the election, the Times was in possession of the story that there was an open counterintelligence investigation into Trump and Russia. Before the election. Did I mention they knew this before the election?"

Maddow (10/9/2018)

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/media-too-quick-to-dismiss-trump-alfa-bank-server-contact-story-1340580419929

"So they knew. That was a heck of a thing for the New York Times to have sat on and not publish. They knew Trump was the subject of an FBI counterintelligence investigation...and they didn't tell us? But now we know. The Times knew."

Maddow (10/9/2018)

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/media-too-quick-to-dismiss-trump-alfa-bank-server-contact-story-1340580419929

"Glenn Simpson was the one who apparently was spreading all of the stories about the Alfa server, the Russian bank communicating with Trump Tower. And then we eventually figured out, based on evidence, that that was not true."

Sara Carter (10/13/2018)

https://archive.org/details/FOXNEWSW_20181013_080000_Fox_and_Friends_First/start/3095/end/3155?q=alpha+bank+trump

"On Halloween 2016, Franklin Foer published this investigative piece about contacts between computer servers at the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank. It's a mysterious piece. No real indication about what those communications meant."

Maddow (12/6/2018)

https://archive.org/details/MSNBCW_20181207_020000_The_Rachel_Maddow_Show/start/2280/end/2340

"Why would computers at the President's business at Trump Tower be communicating repeatedly with computers owned by a Russian bank during the campaign? We still have no idea, but that was Alfa Bank."

Maddow (1/17/2019)

https://archive.org/details/MSNBCW_20190118_020000_The_Rachel_Maddow_Show/start/808/end/868?q=alpha+bank+trump

Hurd: On October 31, 2016, Slate published a report, suggesting a secret connection between Trump Tower and Alfa Bank. Do you know if that story is true?

Mueller: My belief at this point is that it's not true.

HPSCI testimony (7/24/2019)

/fin