The way to stay way ahead of the Russiagate/Trump story is to follow what Newscorp reporter Louise Mensch has been posting. She was the first to report, on Election Eve, November 7, a FISA warrant obtained on Russian bank Alfa Bank and its communication to a server in the US.
Quoting directly from her post:
“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 two banks … “
“The fact that the alleged warrant was a FISA warrant is itself significant. The court exists to grant warrants to examine cases concerned with Foreign Intelligence.”
Mensch’s story ties directly to the article of Franklin Foer (Slate) who reported, on October 31, on communications between a server of Russia’s Alfa Bank and a server operated on behalf of the Trump organization.
Who is Louise Mensch, and when did Newscorp push her out from reporting/editing for website heatst.com?
[ cross-posted at > ** politicalcortex .com ** Too hot for Heat Street ]
She is a Brit ex-Member of Parliament (MP), conservative/Tory who lives in US with her husband who manages the band Metallica. Louise Mensch was always a never-Trumper, first by being pro-Hillary, then pro-Evan McMullin, and she seems to have an innate conservative trust of VP Pence, if you read her twitter stream.
The Guardian profiled her scooping US media about the counterintelligence investigation of communications from a Russian financial institution, that she had identified a fisa warrant, based on communications with a Russian bank and transactions with “US persons”. Her story on Nov 7, and reiterated Nov 10, never pointed to Trump himself as a principal focus. No claim of tapping his phones.
Check her tweeting also. She believes Clapper is denying a warrant that was to tap Trump. She claims still that a warrant to track the Russian bank communications with US was obtained. Also that intercepts supporting collusion have been obtained between Russian intelligence officials monitored, not of intercepts directed at Trump.
In mid-December, Newscorp removed Mensch as editor of heatst.com.
Franklin Foers’ reporting about the server is some of the most startling. He found that the NY Times sent a reporter to Alfa Bank representatives to inquire about the server communications stream.
The Times hadn’t yet been in touch with the Trump campaign —Lichtblau spoke with the campaign a week later—but shortly after it reached out to Alfa, the Trump domain name in question seemed to suddenly stop working. When the scientists looked up the host, the DNS server returned a fail message, evidence that it no longer functioned…
The computer scientists believe there was one logical conclusion to be drawn: The Trump Organization shut down the server after Alfa was told that the Times might expose the connection.…
Or as another of the researchers put it, it looked like “the knee was hit in Moscow, the leg kicked in New York.”
According to the Slate article, four days after that, the host name for the Trump organization server was renamed. The first lookup for the revised host name was … you guessed it … Alfa Bank.
UPI wrote up the story that Slate had unearthed, including the initial lookup, from Alfa Bank, to the renamed host name.
"The equivalent, the experts said, would be someone shutting off one telephone number, getting a new one and having their first call come from a friend who was dialing randomly and correctly guessed the new number.
Whether communications or financial transactions surrounding the bank server leads to associates involved in Trump’s campaign has not been disclosed publicly.
Mensch has pursued other stories that seem to point to alleged coordination of business associates to hackers in North Carolina and overseas, alleged corruption in some FBI offices, and alleged coordination of FBI persons with Trump officials ahead of the Comey letter. It’s a little too much to believe. And yet ...