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Hillary rigged the election and STILL lost.

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  • #31
    Originally posted by tabibito View Post

    It's a special way of holding a cup in polite society so that it doesn't clink when you put it down. IIRC, the first episode of Ouran High School Host Club explains it in detail.

    Comment


    • #32
      Originally posted by Ronson View Post

      I think Trump figured Comey correctly, calling him a "showboat." His actions seemed less politically motivated than simply trying to make headlines for himself. Just an all-around sleazebag.
      I don't know how you could listen to his testimony about the investigation of Hillary and not come away with the conclusion he was clearly covering for her. That would suggest he was political, unless you're assuming they had some deeper connection.

      Comment


      • #33
        Originally posted by Starlight View Post

        I remember warning Sam on this forum, who was a supporter of Hillary during her primaries against Bernie, that Hillary was a dangerous candidate to nominate because Comey was a Republican and could rig the election for his side by announcing a scandal about the emails a week before the election. Sam told me Comey was an upright person who would never do such a thing. The rest is history.
        Nonsense. If you assume Comey influenced the election (which is ridiculous since, like I said, he clearly had her back the whole time), why would you not think any effects of that wasn't offset by Hillary's fake russia-gate smear campaign against Trump mentioned in the OP? If you believe Comey's letter magically swung indecisive voters away from Hillary, why would you not assume the same counter effect happened against Trump, particularly since the MSM and pretty much the entire democrat establishment was fully on board the propagation of that russia-gate train? In fact, I would even speculate Trump would have won by a much larger margin and possibly even the pop vote had they not falsely smeared him the entire election.

        Comment


        • #34
          Reformatted for clarity:

          Originally posted by Bill the Cat View Post
          Debunking: that Jones Alfa-Trump report
          by Robert Graham on October 31, 2021
          .
          [The Alfa-Trump conspiracy-theory has gotten a new life. Among the new things is a report done by Democrat operative Daniel Jones [*]. In this blogpost, I debunk that report.]

          ‘If you’ll recall, the conspiracy-theory comes from anomalous DNS traffic captured by cybersecurity researchers. In the summer of 2016, while Trump was denying involvement with Russian banks, the Alfa Bank in Russia was doing lookups on the name “mail1.trump-email.com”. During this time, additional lookups were also coming from two other organizations with suspicious ties to Trump, Spectrum Health and Heartland Payments.

          This is certainly suspicious, but people have taken it further. They have crafted a conspiracy-theory to explain the anomaly, namely that these organizations were secretly connecting to a Trump server.

          We know this explanation to be false. There is no Trump server, no real server at all, and no connections. Instead, the name was created and controlled by Cendyn. The server the name points to for transmitting bulk email and isn’t really configured to accept connections. It’s built for outgoing spam, not incoming connections. The Trump Org had no control over the name or the server. As Cendyn explains, the contract with the Trump Org ended in March 2016, after which they re-used the IP address for other marketing programs, but since they hadn’t changed the DNS settings, this caused lookups of the DNS name.

          The deception starts by repeatedly referring to the “Trump server”. There is no Trump server. There is a Listrak server operated on behalf of Cendyn. Whether the Trump Org had any control over the name or the server is a key question the report should be trying to prove, not a premise. The report clearly understands this fact, so it can’t be considered a mere mistake, but a deliberate deception.

          People make assumptions that a domain name like “trump-email.com” would be controlled by the Trump organization. It’s wasn’t. When Trump Hotels hired Cendyn to do marketing for them, Cendyn did what they normally do in such cases, register a domain with their client’s name for the sending of bulk emails. They did the same thing with hyatt-email.com, denihan-email.com, mjh-email.com, and so on. What clear is that the Trump organization had no control, no direct ties to this domain until after the conspiracy-theory hit the press.
          I’ve included the omitted opening line of the blog post above to make clear Graham is referencing a “draft research report” prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee dated October 2018, and included as Exhibit A in a lawsuit filed in September 2021 by Daniel Jones et al. against Alfa Bank, demanding injunctive relief and compensation for expenses.

          The asterisk provides a link to a 102-page PDF file available from other sources as well. Exhibit A, containing the draft, begins at page 21.


          The draft research report variously refers to a “Trump Organization server” and a “server associated with the Trump Organization.” Yes, it’s a “Listrak server operated on behalf of Cendyn,” but omitting the fact that Cendyn was acting on behalf of the Trump Organization, “can’t be considered a mere mistake, but a deliberate deception,” as Graham “clearly understands this fact.”

          Don’t take me seriously there. That’s not an accusation. That’s satire.

          The report itself is prominently marked in a highlighted box, “Draft Research Report: Not For Public Dissemination.” It was prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee. It included detailed information on the chain of companies controlling activity on trump-email.com. No one reading this report was likely to be confused by the abbreviated references to a Trump server.

          Okay, these are congress critters, so maybe that’s overly generous, but still.

          This complaint is petty.

          More, the suspicious activity on the server began after Cendyn ended its contract with Trump Org. It began after the server ceased its bulk emails. Which is why the activity was seen as suspicious. I understand this is just a blog post, and it was written quickly, but that’s a pretty big miss. There are jarring contradictions throughout the post, again, likely due to the same lack of deliberation.

          From the initial description of Jones as a “democratic operative” to the misplaced claims of “deliberate deception” to the hyperbolic claims that this hastily put-together blogpost serves as a debunking of conspiracy theories — that are not present in the report — this piece impugns its own credibility. To the extent it makes factual claims, they can be examined. But the overall tone is defensive, naturally enough, as the draft report serves to debunk Graham’s prior debunkings. As such, Graham has an investment he wishes to protect.

          To be clear, Jones and his report are independent of the pseudonymous researchers and stories referencing their research by Slate and other news organizations. Jones’ list of DNS look-ups came from the Senate Intelligence Committee itself.

          As everyone including Graham submits, the activity on the server was suspicious. The look-ups from a highly restricted group of domains were suspicious. The connection to a Moscow-based bank run by Petr Aven, one of the small group of oligarchs regularly reporting to Putin, is suspicious. Aven’s testimony in the Mueller report that Putin quizzed him regularly on his attempts to create connections with Trump adds to those suspicions. At the same time, it needs to be noted that he testified that Putin was dismissive of his attempts in a meeting that occurred after the election.

          The DNS look-ups were almost certainly attempts to create connections. Though other explanations are possible, they’re far less likely. There is a reason why better than 90 percent of the look-ups came from a tiny group of organizations, the remainder coming from a small sample of known malware domains. We don’t know what that reason is, not with certainty, anyway, but any explanation has to address why only these actors were involved.

          Comment


          • #35
            Originally posted by CivilDiscourse View Post

            So, it would wait for full explanation of the facts before reporting on it.
            Yeah, well, that’s absurd. For obvious reasons. Try harder.

            Like with the actual news sources did with the Covington situation?
            There was reasonably good reporting on the Covington kids from the outset, and it became better over time as further facts emerged. Certainly there was poor reporting as well, and whatever passes for reporting on broadcast media, but discriminating readers had a relatively full picture before the weekend was done, not least because young Sandmann’s family had the resources to immediately engage a PR firm to craft a statement for him.

            It would ensure accuracy and completeness of information like it did when it called Hunter's laptop Russian disinformation?
            Most of the disinformation surrounding Hunter’s laptop is homegrown, and I’ve seen y’all spreading it.

            Y’all folks are still spreading the conspiracy theory that Biden had Victor Shokin dismissed to keep him from prosecuting Burisma.

            It’s been years now. There’s no excuse for ignorance regarding Biden’s (highly exaggerated) brags about his role in the dismissal of Viktor Shokin. (IMF funds at risk were multiples of the US contribution. Biden threatened to withhold the loan guarantees in December 2015, but the prosecutor wasn’t actually dismissed until March of the following year.)

            Three months before Biden added his weight to the effort, Ukrainian ambassador was calling Shokin out for failing to go after corruption.
            .
            However, there is one glaring problem that threatens all of the good work that regional leaders here in Odesa, in Kharkiv, in Lviv, and elsewhere are doing to improve the business climate and build a new model of government that serves the people.

            That problem threatens everything that the Rada, the Cabinet, the National Reform Council, and others are doing to push political and economic reforms forward and make life better for Ukrainians, and it flies in the face of what the Revolution of Dignity is trying to achieve.

            That obstacle is the failure of the institution of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine to successfully fight internal corruption. Rather than supporting Ukraine’s reforms and working to root out corruption, corrupt actors within the Prosecutor General’s office are making things worse by openly and aggressively undermining reform.

            In defiance of Ukraine’s leaders, these bad actors regularly hinder efforts to investigate and prosecute corrupt officials within the prosecutor general’s office. They intimidate and obstruct the efforts of those working honestly on reform initiatives within that same office.

            The United States stands behind those who challenge these bad actors.

            We applaud the work of the newly-established Inspector General’s office in the PGO led by David Sakvarelidze and Vitaliy Kasko. Their investigations into corruption within the PGO, have delivered important arrests and have sent the signal that those who abuse their official positions as prosecutors will be investigated and prosecuted.

            I encourage all of you to speak up in support of these brave investigators and prosecutors. Give them the resources and support to successfully prosecute these and future cases.

            We have learned that there have been times that the PGO not only did not support investigations into corruption, but rather undermined prosecutors working on legitimate corruption cases.

            For example, in the case of former Ecology Minister Mykola Zlochevsky, the U.K. authorities had seized 23 million dollars in illicit assets that belonged to the Ukrainian people. Officials at the PGO’s office were asked by the U.K to send documents supporting the seizure.

            Instead they sent letters to Zlochevsky’s attorneys attesting that there was no case against him. As a result the money was freed by the U.K. court and shortly thereafter the money was moved to Cyprus.

            The misconduct by the PGO officials who wrote those letters should be investigated, and those responsible for subverting the case by authorizing those letters should – at a minimum – be summarily terminated.


            It’s diplo-speak, but unusually blunt and unambiguous. That was our Ukrainian ambassador, Geoffrey Pyatt, calling for Urkaine’s Prosecutor General, Viktor Shokin, to be summarily terminated for sabotaging an investigation of Burisma’s owner.

            From the outset it was acknowledged that much of the content of what’s claimed to be a Hunter laptop likely included authentic emails, a portion of which has since been verified. This should have been reported long since and would have been had Giuliani not refused share the disk image with anyone but the NY Post.

            Again, Hunter’s piggy-backing on his father’s name is unseemly (and since dwarfed by the behavior of another family scion) but not illegal, with the qualification that income needs to be reported and taxes paid, and domestic lobbying on behalf of a foreign state requires registration according to FARA.

            Comment


            • #36
              Originally posted by seanD View Post

              I don't know how you could listen to his testimony about the investigation of Hillary and not come away with the conclusion he was clearly covering for her. That would suggest he was political, unless you're assuming they had some deeper connection.
              Maybe he just didn't want to end up being Vince Foster's roommate.

              If he was trying to assist Hillary, he wouldn't have released info about the investigation when he did. She flat out blamed him specifically for her losing the election. She blamed everyone else under the sun later (except for herself) but he was her main culprit.

              Comment


              • #37
                Originally posted by Ronson View Post

                Maybe he just didn't want to end up being Vince Foster's roommate.

                If he was trying to assist Hillary, he wouldn't have released info about the investigation when he did. She flat out blamed him specifically for her losing the election. She blamed everyone else under the sun later (except for herself) but he was her main culprit.
                I agree. If Comey was trying to sabotage her, he had ample time to do it during his testimony in September (this was just after Hillary had soundly beaten Trump in the first debate according to a cnn poll). To think he would have taken a chance and waited two weeks before election day is nonsensical. He likely released that letter because he really did make an honest misjudgement of it and didn't want it to look like he was trying to cover for her anymore than was obvious at the time. He likely figured (or hoped) two weeks wasn't enough to make an impact.
                Last edited by seanD; 05-22-2022, 04:17 PM.

                Comment


                • #38
                  Originally posted by seanD View Post

                  I agree. If Comey was trying to sabotage her, he had ample time to do it during his testimony in September (this was just after Hillary had soundly beaten Trump in the first debate according to a cnn poll). To think he would have taken a chance and waited two weeks before election day is nonsensical. He likely released that letter because he really did make an honest misjudgement of it and didn't want it to look like he was trying to cover for her anymore than was obvious at the time. He likely figured (or hoped) two weeks wasn't enough to make an impact.
                  You also have to remember at the time that all the "experts" were saying that Hillary had basically won, and that the election was just a formality (I remember CBS running a puff piece around this time that fantasized about how wonderful Hillary's first 100 days were going to be), and it's possible Comey didn't want the information coming out after Hillary was already in office.
                  Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
                  But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
                  Than a fool in the eyes of God


                  From "Fools Gold" by Petra

                  Comment


                  • #39
                    Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post

                    You also have to remember at the time that all the "experts" were saying that Hillary had basically won, and that the election was just a formality (I remember CBS running a puff piece around this time that fantasized about how wonderful Hillary's first 100 days were going to be), and it's possible Comey didn't want the information coming out after Hillary was already in office.
                    And the magazine covers...
                    b7b167f9-f6ae-4784-a1eb-6d52e1d75d7d.jpg
                    I understand they go for a couple of hundred dollars now



                    IIRC, New York magazine featured a cover picture where Hillary was being sworn in with a grinning Bill standing beside her.

                    I'm always still in trouble again

                    "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
                    "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
                    "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

                    Comment


                    • #40

                      I'm always still in trouble again

                      "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
                      "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
                      "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

                      Comment


                      • #41
                        Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                        Opposition research, and suggesting negative stories about opponents to the press, are standard practice in elections. It's not "rigging" elections. Change your false thread title.
                        Making up lies, paying for someone to write a false report, involving the FBI and spending 4 years trying to tear down a sitting president based on the lie is not "standard practice" - it's criminal.

                        Comment


                        • #42
                          Originally posted by Juvenal View Post
                          Reformatted for clarity:



                          I’ve included the omitted opening line of the blog post above to make clear Graham is referencing a “draft research report” prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee dated October 2018, and included as Exhibit A in a lawsuit filed in September 2021 by Daniel Jones et al. against Alfa Bank, demanding injunctive relief and compensation for expenses.

                          The asterisk provides a link to a 102-page PDF file available from other sources as well. Exhibit A, containing the draft, begins at page 21.


                          The draft research report variously refers to a “Trump Organization server” and a “server associated with the Trump Organization.” Yes, it’s a “Listrak server operated on behalf of Cendyn,” but omitting the fact that Cendyn was acting on behalf of the Trump Organization, “can’t be considered a mere mistake, but a deliberate deception,” as Graham “clearly understands this fact.”
                          In the IT world of contracting, "acting on behalf of" can mean a number of things. When it comes to marketing strategies, the only "acting on behalf" that Cendyn was doing was sending out mass marketing emails.


                          Don’t take me seriously there. That’s not an accusation. That’s satire.

                          The report itself is prominently marked in a highlighted box, “Draft Research Report: Not For Public Dissemination.” It was prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee. It included detailed information on the chain of companies controlling activity on trump-email.com. No one reading this report was likely to be confused by the abbreviated references to a Trump server.
                          I disagree. This was no more a 'Trump server" than Cendyn's Marriott domain was a "Marriott server". That a domain name is registered by a company to differentiate between their clients in no way gives control of those server assets to the contracting organization. In fact, the way those CSPs typically function, the contracting agents have no administrative access to those servers. They MAY get a dashboard for metrics on numbers of emails sent that day or week, or just a plain report generated. But the marketing firms will receive the content from the customer, have their own people craft the message, and then feed it to the worm process that mass produces the content for one-way distribution.


                          Okay, these are congress critters, so maybe that’s overly generous, but still.
                          Not a single person on the Senate Intelligence Committee has any IT background. J/S.

                          This complaint is petty.
                          As a lifelong IT person, I am wholly uninterested in the bluster and seriously interested in the technology portion.


                          More, the suspicious activity on the server began after Cendyn ended its contract with Trump Org.
                          Which tells me it had nothing to do with Trump. This "suspicious" activity typically is mundane DNS traffic from opening an email. Your email client/server's spam filter will look up the domain the email came from to see if it is still a valid domain name with an A record. If the company managing the server was sloppy, as it appears Cendyn was, they leave A records in their DNS tables, which publishes all the way to the .COM root domain until such time the A record is deleted at the source or the source DNS server dies and fails to re-validate its DNS table. In my professional opinion, it was one of 2 things, the latter of which I believe is more plausible and consistent with Russian state actors.

                          1) Alfa bank received some of the marketing emails and kept trying to read them/ Outlook preview pane kept trying to preview them (Highly unlikely but technically feasible)
                          2) Alfa was state sponsored and had people trying to access Trump servers. Any server with the *trump.com or *trump.org DNS suffixes were fair game. Daily attempts to look those servers up in order to exploit them were made. The server didn't exist any more, so the final TCP connections failed. The other 2 organizations were already compromised by then and were also trying to attack the DNS record's target.

                          It began after the server ceased its bulk emails. Which is why the activity was seen as suspicious.
                          It's only suspicious to people who aren't looking at the actual configurations of those servers. The blog post does a great job at explaining those configurations, and how the server was never configured for a remote connection in, much less an actual bidirectional communications channel.

                          I understand this is just a blog post, and it was written quickly, but that’s a pretty big miss. There are jarring contradictions throughout the post, again, likely due to the same lack of deliberation.
                          But the IT is sound. And well supported.


                          From the initial description of Jones as a “democratic operative” to the misplaced claims of “deliberate deception” to the hyperbolic claims that this hastily put-together blogpost serves as a debunking of conspiracy theories — that are not present in the report — this piece impugns its own credibility. To the extent it makes factual claims, they can be examined. But the overall tone is defensive, naturally enough, as the draft report serves to debunk Graham’s prior debunkings. As such, Graham has an investment he wishes to protect.
                          Again, I am wholly uninterested in the accusations of deception. The technological descriptions are sound and, if factual, pretty rock solid.


                          To be clear, Jones and his report are independent of the pseudonymous researchers and stories referencing their research by Slate and other news organizations. Jones’ list of DNS look-ups came from the Senate Intelligence Committee itself.
                          As I said, DNS lookups are innocuous traffic. Unless they can provide actual TCP connections from/to the IP address, which they haven't, these lookups are honestly nothing more than Russian Google searches.


                          As everyone including Graham submits, the activity on the server was suspicious.
                          Only at the surface level. Until you see the purpose of the server and the configurations in place.

                          The look-ups from a highly restricted group of domains were suspicious.
                          All Russian IP spaces are "highly restricted" due to state actors and their proclivity to hacking any and every US resource they can.

                          The connection to a Moscow-based bank run by Petr Aven, one of the small group of oligarchs regularly reporting to Putin, is suspicious.
                          Not really. They are more than likely state sponsored hackers that run a bank too. That they were attempting to initiate some sort of IP connection to a server with a "*trump.com" domain name is perfectly within their mode of operation. It in no way indicates that voluntary bi-directional communication was ever attempted.

                          Aven’s testimony in the Mueller report that Putin quizzed him regularly on his attempts to create connections with Trump adds to those suspicions.
                          Only if Trump actually had control over those servers, which typically doesn't happen in marketing contracts. If they were trying to prove Trump was reaching out to Moscow, and not the other way, this was most assuredly the wrong server to use.

                          At the same time, it needs to be noted that he testified that Putin was dismissive of his attempts in a meeting that occurred after the election.
                          Not surprising. Plausible Deniability of his sponsoring state actors.

                          The DNS look-ups were almost certainly attempts to create connections.
                          Absolutely unprovable. They could have been attempts to institute a malware campaign on a mail server. They could have been any number of things. But the servers were absolutely not configured for bidirectional communications if what is in the blog post is accurate..

                          Though other explanations are possible, they’re far less likely.
                          Maybe to the untrained eye.

                          There is a reason why better than 90 percent of the look-ups came from a tiny group of organizations, the remainder coming from a small sample of known malware domains. We don’t know what that reason is, not with certainty, anyway, but any explanation has to address why only these actors were involved.

                          ​​​​​​​Again, the most likely scenario was an attempt at remote command and control of a server for state sponsored malware purposes. That accounts for every connection attempt, including the malware domains.
                          That's what
                          - She

                          Without a clear-cut definition of sin, morality becomes a mere argument over the best way to train animals
                          - Manya the Holy Szin (The Quintara Marathon)

                          I may not be as old as dirt, but me and dirt are starting to have an awful lot in common
                          - Stephen R. Donaldson

                          Comment


                          • #43
                            Originally posted by Sparko View Post

                            Making up lies, paying for someone to write a false report, involving the FBI and spending 4 years trying to tear down a sitting president based on the lie is not "standard practice" - it's criminal.
                            What lie.

                            Comment


                            • #44
                              Originally posted by Juvenal View Post

                              What lie.
                              That Trump was colluding with the Russians to fix the election. That he was in their pocket. Everything in the Steele Dossier. The entire investigation into the matter by Mueller based on those lies.

                              Comment


                              • #45
                                Originally posted by Bill the Cat View Post
                                This was no more a 'Trump server" than Cendyn's Marriott domain was a "Marriott server". That a domain name is registered by a company to differentiate between their clients in no way gives control of those server assets to the contracting organization. In fact, the way those CSPs typically function, the contracting agents have no administrative access to those servers. They MAY get a dashboard for metrics on numbers of emails sent that day or week, or just a plain report generated. But the marketing firms will receive the content from the customer, have their own people craft the message, and then feed it to the worm process that mass produces the content for one-way distribution.
                                The investigation into suspicious activity on this server is also the basis for the charge of “spying on the Trump org.” So if it’s not a Trump server … In any case, it’s understood that “Trump server,” or “Trump Organization server” are shorthand for a server owned by Listrak, administered by Cendyn, and until March 2016, engaged in mass emailings on behalf of Trump org.

                                Everyone uses this convention.

                                That doesn’t suggest admin access. There were suggestions that some of the domain look-ups might have been linked to a messaging app, a legacy product as best I recall, but I don’t feel like digging back into the weeds to check it again. At the end of the day, we’ve got what we’ve got. DNS look-ups. No messages. No files. Which is the real reason the claims of spying fall apart, and why the unexplained DNS look-ups remain a mystery.

                                Not a single person on the Senate Intelligence Committee has any IT background. J/S.
                                The staff advising them had IT backgrounds, and I’m not seeing any glaring errors in the relevant section of the final report. The section on Alfa Bank runs for five pages, heavily footnoted for geeks like me. The findings can be summarized by saying they didn’t find anything.

                                RUSSIAN ACTIVE MEASURES CAMPAIGNS AND INTERFERENCE IN THE 2016 U.S. ELECTION
                                VOLUME 5: COUNTERINTELLIGENCE THREATS AND VULNERABILITIES

                                .
                                2. (U) The Alfa Bank Server Story
                                i. (U) Introduction and Findings
                                (U) In July 2016, a group of "prominent computer scientists" identified unusual internet activity connecting two servers registered to Alfa Bank, a Russian financial institution, with an email domain associated with the Trump Organization.5132 The unusual internet activity reflected thousands of Domain Name System queries--commonly referred to as a "DNS lookup"-for an email domain used by the Trump Organization and originating from those two Alfa Bank servers. Public reporting in October 2016 suggested the possibility that this activity reflected the existence of communications between the two organizations.5133 That suggestion was denied by both entities, but their alternative explanations were not consistent.

                                (U) The Committee spoke with Trump Organization IT staff about its understanding of and response to the activity and also considered the results of an FBI investigation. Based on the FBI's assessment, the Committee did not find that the DNS activity reflected the existence of substantive or covert communications between Alfa Bank and Trump Organization personnel. However, the Committee also could not positively determine an intent or purpose that would explain the unusual activity.

                                Re-reading, I’m spotting a mistaken impression on my part. I remember thinking the committee had acquired the DNS logs independently:
                                .
                                To be clear, Jones and his report are independent of the pseudonymous researchers and stories referencing their research by Slate and other news organizations. Jones’ list of DNS look-ups came from the Senate Intelligence Committee itself.

                                The footnotes show otherwise. These are the same logs that came from the “prominent computer scientists.”

                                As a lifelong IT person, I am wholly uninterested in the bluster and seriously interested in the technology portion.
                                *reads the thread title*

                                Umm, okay.

                                Which tells me it had nothing to do with Trump. This "suspicious" activity typically is mundane DNS traffic from opening an email. Your email client/server's spam filter will look up the domain the email came from to see if it is still a valid domain name with an A record. If the company managing the server was sloppy, as it appears Cendyn was, they leave A records in their DNS tables, which publishes all the way to the .COM root domain until such time the A record is deleted at the source or the source DNS server dies and fails to re-validate its DNS table.
                                After the contract with Cendyn ended, there were no emails to open, and it beggars belief to think that any residual emails echoing through the system would only have attracted the notice of two Alfa Bank servers.

                                In my professional opinion, it was one of 2 things, the latter of which I believe is more plausible and consistent with Russian state actors.

                                1) Alfa bank received some of the marketing emails and kept trying to read them/ Outlook preview pane kept trying to preview them (Highly unlikely but technically feasible)
                                2) Alfa was state sponsored and had people trying to access Trump servers. Any server with the *trump.com or *trump.org DNS suffixes were fair game. Daily attempts to look those servers up in order to exploit them were made. The server didn't exist any more, so the final TCP connections failed. The other 2 organizations were already compromised by then and were also trying to attack the DNS record's target.
                                See, now that doesn’t work. The “prominent computer scientists” were looking specifically for evidence of Russian state actors trying to hack Trump domains in response to recently reported activity against the DNC servers. They found activity on this server that was anything but, which is what aroused their suspicions in the first place.

                                It's only suspicious to people who aren't looking at the actual configurations of those servers. The blog post does a great job at explaining those configurations, and how the server was never configured for a remote connection in, much less an actual bidirectional communications channel.
                                You’re talking about this blog post.
                                .
                                If you’ll recall, the conspiracy-theory comes from anomalous DNS traffic captured by cybersecurity researchers. In the summer of 2016, while Trump was denying involvement with Russian banks, the Alfa Bank in Russia was doing lookups on the name “mail1.trump-email.com”. During this time, additional lookups were also coming from two other organizations with suspicious ties to Trump, Spectrum Health and Heartland Payments.

                                This is certainly suspicious, but people have taken it further …

                                If “certainly suspicious” means something different than what I’m thinking, I could overlook the fact the source you cited for me is saying things directly contradicting you.

                                Again, I am wholly uninterested in the accusations of deception. The technological descriptions are sound and, if factual, pretty rock solid.
                                *reads the thread title, again*

                                Only if Trump actually had control over those servers, which typically doesn't happen in marketing contracts. If they were trying to prove Trump was reaching out to Moscow, and not the other way, this was most assuredly the wrong server to use.
                                I was transferring files using FTP before there was an internet, and I guarantee that didn’t involve control of the servers. We don’t know how the server was configured at the time. And nobody, so far as I’ve read, was trying to prove anything. Rather, they were trying to explain suspicious activity, and, when they reached the limits of their own efforts handed the investigation off to folks with more resources, who similarly failed.

                                At the end of the day, there is an explanation, even if we’re never able to nail it down. Nobody, from what I can see, is going to find it at this late date.

                                I could add that I usually bypassed DNS in favor of absolute addresses because DNS was flaky back then. So if they were trying to establish connections, and trying to keep it secret, there wasn’t any need to keep pinging DNS servers. If they were looking to engage in clandestine communication everything’s wrong about this, from my experience. There’s no suggested communication here that couldn’t have been accomplished with a draft folder on a shared email account, leaving no suspicious traces to attract attention.

                                Not surprising. Plausible Deniability of his sponsoring state actors.
                                Two items for clarification. First, this wasn’t what Putin said, it’s what Aven said Putin said. If Aven was trying to cover anyone’s heinie with that testimony, it was his own. And second, these were attempts to create connections after the election, suggesting Putin didn’t have any at the time. Maybe because there were no prior connections and maybe because they’d been severed after press reports had attracted too much attention.

                                But the reports from Aven that Putin was trying to find backdoor channels during the transition is corroborated by Erik Prince’s meetings in the Seychelles.

                                And it needs to be emphasized that whether before the election, during the transition, or after the election had been won, there was never a lack of official connections available to candidate Trump, President-elect Trump, or President Trump, and any efforts to bypass those official connections was a national security threat. And, after the election, strictly illegal. Communications with the president, acting as president, belong to the presidency, not to any individual president.

                                Absolutely unprovable. They could have been attempts to institute a malware campaign on a mail server. They could have been any number of things. But the servers were absolutely not configured for bidirectional communications if what is in the blog post is accurate..
                                Unprovable doesn’t address the fact the data we have remain unexplained.

                                And when it comes to what remains unproven, there’s no need to look beyond the thread title.

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