Spygate, Part #6: Alfa Bank
Alfa Bank, also known as the beginning of the end of the Presidency of Donald John Trump.
That was a joke.
Alfa Bank, headquartered in Moscow, Russia, is currently owned by Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven and German Khan, although the Chief Executive Officer is Vladimir Verkhoshinsky, having taken the position on August 1, 2018. It can also be spelled as “Alpha Bank”.
German Khan is the father-in-law of Alex van der Zwaan. Khan, Aven and Fridman are all members of the board for the organisation LetterOne.
This article, however, is more specifically about the story of Alfa Bank in relation to the server, and all of the troubles interwoven with it. This will also explain the role of Daniel J. Jones (who is on the board at Human Rights First) and the Penn Quarter Group. We also need to discuss New Knowledge.
“Hang on a second here, why title it Alfa Bank then?”
Moving swiftly on.
In 2003, Daniel J. Jones became an employee at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where he focused on international analysis until January 2007, when he left and became a staffer for the Senate Intelligence Committee for Senator Dianne Feinstein, a committee she joined back in January 1993.
On December 6, 2007, Mark Mazzetti — with contributions from Eric Lichtblau and Scott Shane — published the article “C.I.A. Destroyed Tapes of Interrogations” in The New York Times, which discussed the destruction of two separate video tapes documenting the interrogations of two Al Qaeda operatives, including Abu Zubaydah. This led to Jones being picked as the chief investigator, sifting through thousands of documents to learn about the Central Intelligence Agency’s torture program.
In December 2014, Daniel J. Jones finished his work on the Senate torture report about the Central Intelligence Agency’s involvement and their destruction of video tapes related to it.
A few months later, New Knowledge was founded in May 2015 in Austin, TX by Jonathon Morgan, a former adviser at the United States Department of State and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a propaganda researcher at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and a publisher at the Brookings Institution, The Atlantic and The Washington Post. Morgan is also the founder of an associated organisation, Data For Democracy.
On November 25, 2015, an e-mail was sent from TrumpHotelCollection@contact-client.com to Alfa Bank’s server, which advertised a Black Friday sale at Trump Hotels.
On December 3, 2015, Senator Feinstein led a tribute to Jones, on the floor of the United States Senate. The next day, December 4, Jones left his position, where his leaving was noted in an article published by Ali Watkins, “Torture Report Author Quietly Leaves The Senate”, in BuzzFeed News.
Shortly afterwards, on December 16, 2015, Jones was announced as joining The Daschle Group, a strategic advisory firm led by Tom Daschle, a former Senate Democratic Leader. As such, towards the end of the month, on December 28, Jones was named the Senior Vice President and Public Policy Adviser at the organisation.
The next year, on January 11, 2016, Christopher Steele met with Adam Waldman, where they both discussed Oleg Deripaska’s attempts to gain a visa for a business visit scheduled for the end of February 2016.
On January 28, 2016, a reception for The Cuba Consortium was hosted at the Cuban Embassy in Washington, DC by Cuban Ambassador José Rodríguez. Others in attendance included Jones, Ben Rhodes and Janet Napolitano.
On February 4, 2016, Alfa Bank received an e-mail from TrumpHotelCollection@contact-client.com, again advertising Trump Hotels.
On February 21, 2016, Steele e-mailed Bruce Ohr and informed him that he had spoken with Waldman and Paul Hauser, and that there would be an inter-agency meeting held by the United States Government about Oleg Deripaska’s future visit to America.
In March 2016, Fusion GPS approached Perkins Coie to discuss potential engagement in the development of opposition research on Donald Trump, fully aware that Perkins Coie represented both the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign.
In April 2016, Perkins Coie retained Fusion GPS on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Towards the end of the month, on April 29, Perkins Coie partner Michael Sussmann contacted Shawn Henry of CrowdStrike Services to hire the organisation for the Democratic National Committee after a series of phishing e-mails started to affect their employees.
As Marc Elias, another partner at Perkins Coie and Clinton campaign lawyer, had retained Fusion GPS — apparently without the knowledge of Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a member of the internal cybersecurity committee formed by Amy Dacey, and John Podesta, the chairman of the Clinton campaign —the information surrounding the hacking of the Democratic National Committee eventually made its way to Glenn Simpson. Simpson was aware of this information before his meeting with Christopher Steele, which occurred before the Trump Tower meeting on June 9, 2016. This has been discussed in a previous article.
In May 2016, the Washington Free Beacon informed Fusion GPS to stop doing research into Donald Trump, as Trump was on the verge of gaining the Republican Party nomination.
On May 4, 2016, the Alfa Bank server started to search for the IP address of the Trump Organization server. The Trump Organization server was being ran and managed by the organisation Cendyn, which does e-mail marketing campaigns for hotels.
In early June 2016, Glenn Simpson and Christopher Steele met each other at Heathrow Airport, where Simpson then hired Steele to investigate Donald Trump’s potential ties to Russia.
As noted in a previous article, before June 14, 2016, Sussmann, CrowdStrike Services and the Democratic National Committee carefully crafted a damage control story with regards to the hacking of the Democratic National Committee, which Dmitri Alperovitch and Shawn Henry released to Ellen Nakashima at The Washington Post.
On June 14, 2016, Nakashima, with contributions from Tom Hamburger, published the article “Russian government hackers penetrated DNC, stole opposition research on Trump” in The Washington Post.
After the article’s publishing, a number of bipartisan computer scientists — which included “John McCain Republicans” — started to search for Russian infiltrators. The members of the group were scattered across America and were numerous (there were at least nine members). To search for the infiltrators, they used the Domain Name System (DNS).
In late July 2016, a member of the bipartisan computer scientist organisation, known by the alias “Tea Leaves”, discovered potential malware moving from the Alfa Bank server to the Trump Organization server. The information “Tea Leaves” discovered was then circulated among his colleagues.
“Tea Leaves himself told The Intercept that he had to keep his identity and methods a secret because ‘I run a cybersecurity company and I do not want DDOS and never have we been DDOS, nor do I want other attention.’” — The Intercept
“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.’” — Franklin Foer, Slate
In August 2016, a member of the bipartisan computer scientist organisation met with and informed The New York Times’ reporter Eric Lichtblau about their discovery of the communications between the Alfa Bank and Trump Organization servers.
It should be noted that Glenn Simpson, during this time, was also receiving the reports from an unknown source about the Alfa Bank server, although he claimed that it was beyond his expertise.
Question: “Do you have any information there have been reports about potential communications between a server at Alpha Bank and potentially servers that belong to the Trump organization or Trump — some entity associated with Donald Trump? Do you have any information about those particular reports?”
Answer: “That’s kind of an open-ended question. I think what I said is we were asked about that and it wasn’t — that information wasn’t generated by us and I’m happy to say it’s beyond our competence to have generated, but in the course of being asked about it, you know, people gave us information. I don’t know what else to say.”
Question: “And what information were you given?”
Answer: “A bunch of data. I mean, we were shown like do you know what this would mean, does this mean, and it’s beyond — it’s really — it’s certainly beyond my competence.”
It should also be noted that, as Simpson was receiving the data from the bipartisan computer scientist organisation, Steele was pushing this information as a theory to Bruce Ohr as potential evidence of collusion between Donald Trump and Russia.
“Steele offered Ohr many other theories over their contacts, including a now widely discredited one that the Russian Alfa Bank had a computer server ‘as a link’ to the Trump campaign, Ohr’s notes show.” — The Hill
The next month, Director John Brennan of the Central Intelligence Agency started to personally brief the various members of the Gang of Eight on Russian interference in the 2016 United States Presidential election. The briefings officially began on August 11, and they were done in consultation with the White House.
At the time, the Gang of Eight consisted of: Senator Mitch McConnell, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Representative Adam Schiff, Representative Devin Nunes, Speaker Paul Ryan, Representative Nancy Pelosi, Senator Harry Reid and Senator Richard Burr.
During the course of Brennan’s classified briefings, they were partly dedicated to potential financial ties between the Russians and Trump associates. The briefings also focused on a computer back channel between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank.
“In classified sessions in August and September, intelligence officials also briefed congressional leaders on the possibility of financial ties between Russians and people connected to Mr. Trump. They focused particular attention on what cyberexperts said appeared to be a mysterious computer back channel between the Trump Organization and the Alfa Bank, which is one of Russia’s biggest banks and whose owners have longstanding ties to Mr. Putin.” — The New York Times
In September 2016, “Tea Leaves” and the five computer scientist colleagues started to work together to try and gain public attention on the connection between the Alfa Bank and Trump Organization servers. One of the outlets they reached out to was The Intercept, where “Tea Leaves” and an analysis paper author provided The Intercept with three documents.
- An academia-style white paper about the Trump Organization server.
- An analysis of the white paper.
- A dossier on Alfa Bank.
“Tea Leaves” and the five computer scientists, including the analysis paper author, were assisted by L. Jean Camp, a professor at the Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing.
“Both Tea Leaves and the analysis author said they did not know who wrote the other documents, and would not say how they obtained them. Professor L. Jean Camp, an esteemed computer scientist quoted at length in the Slate piece and also interviewed by The Intercept, said she knew the author of the Alfa Bank document — compiled with the exhaustive detail of a political oppo team, not a university researcher — but would not reveal who it was.” — The Intercept
In the same month, September 2016, Eric Lichtblau wrote a draft article about the Alfa Bank-Trump Organization server connection, while the lawyer of an employee at the bipartisan computer scientist organisation warned the the Federal Bureau of Investigation about the coming article.
“As Lichtblau wrote a draft of an article for the Times, Max’s lawyer contacted the F.B.I. to alert agents that a story about Trump would be running in a national publication, and to pass along the data. A few days later, an F.B.I. official called Lichtblau and asked him to come to the Bureau’s headquarters, in Washington, D.C..” — The New Yorker
Keep this quote in mind.
On September 9, 2016, Spencer Ackerman published the article “Inside the fight to reveal the CIA’s torture secrets” in The Guardian, which was followed by a further article on the same day, “Senate investigator breaks silence about CIA’s ‘failed coverup’ of torture report”, which featured an extensive interview with Jones.
A few weeks later, September 19, 2016, Sussmann visited the Federal Bureau of Investigation Headquarters, where he met with James A. Baker, the General Counsel to Director James Comey, where he provided information in relation to the Russia probe — more specifically, about the alleged server connection between Trump Tower and Alfa Bank.
Sussmann and Baker would then have two further phone calls, upon which Baker learned that Sussmann was in touch with the mainstream media, including The New York Times. Sussmann also contacted Franklin Foer at Slate about the server connection.
On the same day — September 19 — Steele finalised another memo, which detailed the relationship between President Vladimir Putin and Alfa Group.
Two days later, on September 21, 2016, Eric Lichtblau met with Jeffrey Birnbaum of Alfa Bank in Washington, DC, where Birnbaum denied any connection between Alfa Bank and Donald Trump.
Another two days later, on September 23, 2016, the Alfa Bank server ceased their contact with the Trump Organization server.
Between September 26–30, 2016, Eric Lichtblau contacted the Trump campaign. The next day, on September 27, the Trump Organization created a new host name, trump1[dot]contact-client[dot]com.
In late September 2016, an official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation contacted Eric Lichtblau, where they requested for him to visit them at their headquarters. Lichtblau then met with numerous officials, where they discussed Russian interference in the 2016 United States presidential election, and their intelligence acquired about the server connection between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization. During the meeting, the Federal Bureau of Investigation requested for Lichtblau to delay the release of his article.
To remind you of the previous quote:
“As Lichtblau wrote a draft of an article for the Times, Max’s lawyer contacted the F.B.I. to alert agents that a story about Trump would be running in a national publication, and to pass along the data. A few days later, an F.B.I. official called Lichtblau and asked him to come to the Bureau’s headquarters, in Washington, D.C..” — The New Yorker
Now a quote from The Epoch Times:
“Baker acknowledged that he soon discovered Sussmann was also speaking to The New York Times regarding that same information. The FBI later contacted The New York Times and asked the newspaper to hold off on publishing while the bureau investigated the matter.” —Jeff Carlson, The Epoch Times
In actuality, reporters at The New York Times had used the server connection between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization as one of their main investigative leads in late September, with another lead being the memos written by Christopher Steele, in an effort led by Lichtblau and Steven Lee Myers. Their efforts were aided by sources from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, Capitol Hill, numerous other intelligence agencies.
In early October 2016, the Federal Bureau of Investigation started to investigate the data connection between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization.
“Mr. Steele met his F.B.I. contact in Rome in early October… […] … around the same time, the F.B.I. began examining a mysterious data connection between Alfa Bank, one of Russia’s biggest, and a Trump Organization email server. Some private computer scientists said it could represent a secret link between the Trump Organization and Moscow.” — The New York Times
Around the same time, “Tea Leaves” and five other computer scientists passed their findings about the Alfa Bank and Trump Organization servers to Paul Vixie.
On October 4, 2016, “Tea Leaves” created a Reddit account, named “LeavesTeaLeaves”. The same day, /u/LeavesTeaLeaves posted a now-defunct link on /r/i2p, while posting an imgur.com image to /r/thedonald — presumably mistaking it for /r/The_Donald.
On October 5, 2016, Jones was announced as being a participant for a future conference on December 5, 2016.
Between October 6–8, 2016, the Double Exposure Investigative Film Festival was hosted in Washington, DC, which was attended by Franklin Foer and Glenn Simpson.
At the end of the month, on October 31, 2016, Lichtblau and Myers published the article “Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia” in The New York Times. For the article, The New York Times interviewed Senator Reid for it, but then later discarded the discussion.
“For much of the summer, the F.B.I. pursued a widening investigation into a Russian role in the American presidential campaign. Agents scrutinized advisers close to Donald J. Trump, looked for financial connections with Russian financial figures, searched for those involved in hacking the computers of Democrats, and even chased a lead — which they ultimately came to doubt — about a possible secret channel of email communication from the Trump Organization to a Russian bank.” — The New York Times
On the same day, October 31, 2016, Franklin Foer published the article “Was a Trump Server Communicating With Russia?” in Slate. This article was then retweeted by Hillary Clinton, in a tweet which read: “It’s time for Trump to answer serious questions about his ties to Russia.”
This was soon followed by a statement from Jake Sullivan, tweeted through Hillary Clinton’s account: “Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.”
At the same time, days before Election Day 2016, the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee ceased funding Fusion GPS’s research. Fusion GPS then passed Steele’s reports to Marc Elias.
In November 2016, before Election Day, agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation visited the offices of Listrak in Lititz, PA as part of their investigation into the Alfa Bank-Trump Organization servers.
On November 2, 2016, Franklin Foer published a follow-up to his article in Slate, “Trump’s Server, Revisited”.
A few days later, on November 7, 2016, Louise Mensch published the article “EXCLUSIVE: FBI ‘Granted FISA Warrant’ Covering Trump Camp’s Ties To Russia” in Heat Street, which revealed the existence of a FISA on American persons to investigate ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
“Two separate sources with links to the counter-intelligence community have confirmed to Heat Street that the FBI sought, and was granted, a FISA court warrant in October, giving counter-intelligence permission to examine the activities of ‘U.S. persons’ in Donald Trump’s campaign with ties to Russia.
Contrary to earlier reporting in the New York Times, which cited FBI sources as saying that the agency did not believe that the private server in Donald Trump’s Trump Tower which was connected to a Russian bank had any nefarious purpose, the FBI’s counter-intelligence arm, sources say, re-drew an earlier FISA court request around possible financial and banking offenses related to the server. The first request, which, sources say, named Trump, was denied back in June, but the second was drawn more narrowly and was granted in October after evidence was presented of a server, possibly related to the Trump campaign, and its alleged links to the two banks; SVB Bank and Russia’s Alfa Bank. While the Times story speaks of metadata, sources suggest that a FISA warrant was granted to look at the full content of emails and other related documents that may concern US persons.” — Heat Street
As we know now, this would eventually snowball and reveal the existence of the Carter Page FISA.
It should also be noted that, on January 20, 2017, Liz Spayd wrote the following in her article “Trump, Russia, and the News Story That Wasn’t” in The New York Times.
“I appreciate the majority view that there wasn’t enough proof of a link between Trump and the Kremlin to write a hard-hitting story. But The Times knew several critical facts: the F.B.I. had a sophisticated investigation underway on Trump’s organization, possibly including FISA warrants. Investigators had identified a mysterious communication channel, partly through a lead from anti-Trump operatives.” —Liz Spayd, The New York Times
In any case, Donald Trump won the election.
On November 16, 2016, Senator Mark Warner became the minority voice on the Senate Intelligence Committee, replacing Senator Feinstein, which granted him a position in the Gang of Eight.
On December 5, 2016, Jones attended the discussion about “The Future of Foreign Policy” with John Cavanagh and Ted Wittenstein, moderated by Doug Foyle at Wesleyan University.
On January 20, 2017, Donald John Trump was inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States.
After January 20, 2017, Senator Warner and another Democrat Senator who had reviewed the information gathered by the bipartisan computer scientist organisation about the Trump Organization-Alfa Bank servers passed the information to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency for further review. The Central Intelligence Agency then pushed the Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate the information.
On January 21, 2017, Jonathon Morgan published the article “How the ‘Alt-Right’ Came to Dominate the Comments on Trump’s Facebook Page” in The Atlantic.
A few days later, on January 31, 2017, the Democracy Integrity Project was founded by Jones, Adam Kaufmann and Dafna Hochman Rand. As Thor Halvorssen noted during a Facebook post on July 25, 2017, Kaufmann had a history with Fusion GPS, a relationship which had existed for 20 years.
“After his return to the U.S., Mr. De Córdoba’s supervisors at the Journal received multiple threat letters from attorney Adam Kaufmann of the New York law firm Lewis Baach. Mr. Kaufmann has a relationship with the principals of Fusion GPS that stretches back twenty years. Mr. Kaufmann is the lawyer Derwick hired to pay Fusion GPS’s fees and to ensure that Fusion GPS’s paperwork, including all bills, would be covered by attorney-client privilege.” — Thor Halvorssen
Two months later, on March 9, 2017, Pamela Brown and Jose Pagliery published the article “Sources: FBI investigation continues into ‘odd’ computer link between Russian bank and Trump Organization” in CNN.
The day after, on March 10, 2017, Tim Mekeel published the article “FBI gets Lititz firm’s help in probe of Russian bank’s ‘odd’ interest in Trump Hotels marketing emails” in Lancaster Online, which was about the November visit to Listrak by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Around March 10, 2017, the second Democrat Senator approached Jones and asked him to look at the bipartisan computer scientist data. Jones then assembled a team of computer scientists, which were then divided into two groups, one on each coast of the United States. The East Coast and the West Coast teams were kept separate, and they also consulted with Professor Camp.
A few days later, on March 15, 2017, Jones texted Waldman on the suggestion of Steele. They then met the next day, March 16, where Jones said the Democracy Integrity Project — whom hired Fusion GPS as a contractor — was being funded by a number of Silicon Valley billionaires and George Soros. Michael Vachon would later confirm that the Open Society Foundations had provided a grant to the Democracy Integrity Project.
Before March 17, 2017, the Penn Quarter Group worked with Reuters to create the article “Russian elite invested nearly $100 million in Trump buildings”. Then, on March 17, Nathan Layne, Ned Parker, Svetlana Reiter, Stephen Grey and Ryan McNeill published the article “Russian elite invested nearly $100 million in Trump buildings” in Reuters.
On the same day, March 17, Alfa Bank’s Viet Dinh sent a letter to L. Jean Camp, warning her to keep all documents readily available in relation to her research into the Trump Organization-Alfa Bank server connection, and her correspondence with “Tea Leaves”.
This was in response to an article a few days prior, March 15, 2017, “A Clinton supporter pushed the Trump-Russia computer narrative investigated by the FBI” in Circa, written by Sara Carter and John Solomon, which named L. Jean Camp as being responsible.
Before March 20, 2017, the Penn Quarter Group worked with McClatchy to create the article “FBI’s Russia-influence probe includes a look at Breitbart, InfoWars news sites”.
On March 20, 2017, Peter Stone and Greg Gordon published the article “FBI’s Russian-influence probe includes a look at Breitbart, InfoWars news sites” in McClatchy.
The next day, on March 21, 2017, Louise Mensch tweeted in support of Professor Camp, in response to potential litigation from Alfa Bank: “Fuck you. Willing to bet there are folks who will happily pay every penny of L Jean Camp’s legal bill.”
On March 22, 2017, Jose Pagliery published the article “Russian bank sends threatening letter to computer scientist who called for Trump investigation” in CNN, which related to Alfa Bank’s letter to L. Jean Camp on March 17, 2017.
On March 28, 2017, attorneys for L. Jean Camp — Mark Lemley and Marcia Hofmann — sent a response letter to Viet D. Dinh in response to his letter from March 17, 2017 about the Alfa Bank-Trump Organization server connection.
On March 28, 2017, Jones met with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where he discussed Penn Quarter Group’s role in exposing foreign influence in western elections, that Penn Quarter Group is funded by 7 to 10 wealthy donors in New York and California for approximately $50 million and that the services of Christopher Steele, [REDACTED] and Fusion GPS had been secured to exposed Russian interference in the 2016 elections, with plans to provide information to policymakers on Capitol Hill, the mainstream media and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
With this in mind, the below image should make complete sense:
On March 31, 2017, Morgan, Kris Shaffer, C.E. Carey, Wendy Mak and Alex Amend published the article “Sockpuppets, Secessionists and Breitbart” in Medium, which discussed their discovery of Russian coordination in social media in March 2016.
In May 2017, Khan, Aven and Fridman filed a defamation lawsuit against BuzzFeed News, Ben Smith and other journalists.
On July 11, 2017, /u/LeavesTeaLeaves (“Tea Leaves”) made a third post to Reddit in a thread on /r/worldnews titled “Trump Jr. Was Told in Email of Russian Effort to Aid Campaign”, which was an article from The New York Times.
The link provided by “Tea Leaves” was to a tweet by Ali Vitali of NBC News, which contained a response from the Trump campaign about the Slate article on October 31, 2016.
In October 2017, Khan, Aven and Fridman filed a suit with the U.S. District Court in Washington against Fusion GPS for libel.
On November 9, 2017, New Knowledge launched their Digital Threat Mitigation Platform. The day after, on November 10, 2017, Matt Burgess published the article “Here’s the first evidence Russia used Twitter to influence Brexit” in Wired, where he used tweets provided by New Knowledge.
On December 12, 2017, Doug Jones was elected as the next Senator of Alabama, defeating Roy Moore at a vote tally of 50.0% — 48.3%.
In January 2018, New Knowledge received seed funding from Moonshots Capital, with participation from Haystack, GGV Capital, Geekdome Fund, Capital Factory and Spitfire Ventures. New Knowledge was also partly funded by LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman.
At some stage, New Knowledge and the Democracy Integrity Project started to work together, where they collectively founded DisInfo 2018.
“New Knowledge and The Democracy Integrity Project have created a dashboard containing up-to-the-hour summary statistics from these accounts, so that citizens can be aware of the foreign propaganda efforts aimed at American voters as we approach our midterm elections in November.” — Disinfo 2018
On May 9, 2018, Jones published the opinion piece “It’s time to hold the CIA accountable. Gina Haspel’s hearing is the best place to start.” in The Washington Post.
In early September 2018, Scott Shane attended a meeting in Washington, DC, hosted by American Engagement Technologies, where Mikey Dickerson and Sara Hudson discussed Project Birmingham — an effort to to use social media and online advertisements to suppress Republican votes and execute a false flag to reduce votes for Roy Moore during the Alabama special election. Shane signed a non-disclosure agreement as part of it.
On September 1, 2018, the Democracy Integrity Project entered dissolution.
On October 15, 2018, Dexter Filkins published the article “Was There a Connection Between a Russian Bank and the Trump Campaign?” in The New Yorker.
On October 20, 2018, New Knowledge published an article, “How New Knowledge is fighting against midterm election disinformation”, which was about DisInfo 2018.
On October 23, 2018, Max de Haldevang published the article “How to track trolls in your feed during the 2018 US midterms” in Quartz, which featured mentions of Disinfo2018 alongside others such as Hamilton68.
On December 19, 2018, Scott Shane and Alan Blinder published the article “Secret Experiment in Alabama Senate Race Imitated Russian Tactics” in The New York Times. A few days later, on December 26, Hoffman apologised for funding New Knowledge.
In February 2019, DisInfo 2019 was used to tie Representative Tulsi Gabbard’s presidential campaign with Russian influence operations.
“Within a few days of Gabbard announcing her presidential bid, DisInfo 2018, part of the cybersecurity firm New Knowledge, found that three of the top 15 URLs shared by the 800 social media accounts affiliated with known and suspected Russian propaganda operations directed at U.S. citizens were about Gabbard.” — NBC News
That’s the end.
Oh, I guess Daniel Jones has a movie about him now, which is odd. Ted Levine (the guy from Monk) plays John Brennan. Don’t ask.
