Alfa Bank, Cambridge Analytica, Trump Tower

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:
I think this is a major oversimplification and misses the forest for the trees. If there's something apparently fishy going on with some party that prompts the IC to get a warrant to surveil them, they aren't going to look at just one single server. What does one single server mean? Nothing. What's important is who is using it and for what purposes and that's where it becomes irrelevant where it was or wasn't located.

It is this tendency for Mensch and those who trust her to explain away every discrepancy as if it was unimportant that is so frustrating. I get the same feeling about the Mensheviks as I do about the Pizzagate folks.

If Trump and his campaign/transition teams were as involved with the Russians as you all seem to think, this server would have been relatively unimportant. The irony is that Mensch and her wrong-headed ideas about this server led directly to Trump's notorious tweets about the "tapp" Obama put on his phone.

Just to be clear, it is obvious that there are some very strange and suspicious ties between Trump and the Russians. That can be true and Mensch can still be wrong about a whole bunch of things. I would argue that she actually makes it easier to discredit the actual Trump/Russian connection by crowding the discussion with misinformation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am going to throw out my own conspiracy theory: does Trump go to Mar-a-Lago so often because he (a) hates Washington; (b) likes to juice the Club's revenues by his presence;or (c) the whole place is one big Russian safehouse bugged to the hilt and staffed by foreign agents?

d) all of the above

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I think this is a major oversimplification and misses the forest for the trees. If there's something apparently fishy going on with some party that prompts the IC to get a warrant to surveil them, they aren't going to look at just one single server. What does one single server mean? Nothing. What's important is who is using it and for what purposes and that's where it becomes irrelevant where it was or wasn't located.

It is this tendency for Mensch and those who trust her to explain away every discrepancy as if it was unimportant that is so frustrating. I get the same feeling about the Mensheviks as I do about the Pizzagate folks.

If Trump and his campaign/transition teams were as involved with the Russians as you all seem to think, this server would have been relatively unimportant. The irony is that Mensch and her wrong-headed ideas about this server led directly to Trump's notorious tweets about the "tapp" Obama put on his phone.

Just to be clear, it is obvious that there are some very strange and suspicious ties between Trump and the Russians. That can be true and Mensch can still be wrong about a whole bunch of things. I would argue that she actually makes it easier to discredit the actual Trump/Russian connection by crowding the discussion with misinformation.

FISA warrant was apparently on the server though.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:FISA warrant was apparently on the server though.

According to Mensch. Is anyone else making that connection (and not basing it on Mensch's theories)?

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FISA warrant was apparently on the server though.

According to Mensch. Is anyone else making that connection (and not basing it on Mensch's theories)?

Paul Wood, BBC? Is he reputable? Independent of Mensch?

I wrote then that the secret US intelligence court had granted an order, a so-called Fisa warrant, to intercept the electronic records of two Russian banks.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39435786

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I think this is a major oversimplification and misses the forest for the trees. If there's something apparently fishy going on with some party that prompts the IC to get a warrant to surveil them, they aren't going to look at just one single server. What does one single server mean? Nothing. What's important is who is using it and for what purposes and that's where it becomes irrelevant where it was or wasn't located.

It is this tendency for Mensch and those who trust her to explain away every discrepancy as if it was unimportant that is so frustrating. I get the same feeling about the Mensheviks as I do about the Pizzagate folks.

If Trump and his campaign/transition teams were as involved with the Russians as you all seem to think, this server would have been relatively unimportant. The irony is that Mensch and her wrong-headed ideas about this server led directly to Trump's notorious tweets about the "tapp" Obama put on his phone.

Just to be clear, it is obvious that there are some very strange and suspicious ties between Trump and the Russians. That can be true and Mensch can still be wrong about a whole bunch of things. I would argue that she actually makes it easier to discredit the actual Trump/Russian connection by crowding the discussion with misinformation.

Following up on the bolded...if in fact the voter rolls were extracted and facebook profiles were targeted, and it was done through this server, then it would not be unimportant. A lot of ifs, but we just don't know.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am going to throw out my own conspiracy theory: does Trump go to Mar-a-Lago so often because he (a) hates Washington; (b) likes to juice the Club's revenues by his presence;or (c) the whole place is one big Russian safehouse bugged to the hilt and staffed by foreign agents?

d.) All of the above?

[Anonymous]

My personal working theory is that the UK Intel community is the primary source for a lot of the information going to Mensch and all other major US journalists. We must remember that the 5 Eyes Agreement means that we share virtually all intelligence with those favored Anglo allies. And the U.K. is by far our closest Intel ally.

I know people keep saying the NSA or FBI are leaking to "harm" Trump. But everything the FBI has the UK also already has. They tipped off the CIA and FBI that Trump operatives were meeting with Russians in Europe. Every call that the FBI possesses is also in the hands of GCHQ. And no one in the Trump administration can do a damn thing about the Brits revealing all. They know he is a fraud.

When the history books are written about this scandal, I think we will see that the UK looking like heroes and saving American democracy. The strong trans-Atlantic peace is in their interest.

[Anonymous]

I've had similar thoughts to 14:06.

Jeff, I assume you didn't mean for this to sound insulting: "I get the same feeling about the Mensheviks as I do about the Pizzagate folks." I'll try to assume good intentions on your part, but that comment is unfortunate.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FISA warrant was apparently on the server though.

According to Mensch. Is anyone else making that connection (and not basing it on Mensch's theories)?

Paul Wood, BBC? Is he reputable? Independent of Mensch?

I wrote then that the secret US intelligence court had granted an order, a so-called Fisa warrant, to intercept the electronic records of two Russian banks.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39435786

Wood does not mention the server nor connect the FISA warrant to the Trump server. To the contrary, he says that the FISA was "to intercept the electronic records of two Russian banks." In that case, they would be targeting the bank's server, not Trump's server. Moreover, while Mensch draws a line from a FISA warrant covering Trump's server to surveillance of Trump (more explicitly, Trump Tower), Wood explicitly says, "Neither Trump nor his associates are named in the Fisa order."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've had similar thoughts to 14:06.

Jeff, I assume you didn't mean for this to sound insulting: "I get the same feeling about the Mensheviks as I do about the Pizzagate folks." I'll try to assume good intentions on your part, but that comment is unfortunate.

This. I don't think any of us have been all in on Mensch's theories - the fact that she's a conservative and one who worked for Murdoch, to boot, is a reason to be cautious - but she has had some interesting theories.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:
Following up on the bolded...if in fact the voter rolls were extracted and facebook profiles were targeted, and it was done through this server, then it would not be unimportant. A lot of ifs, but we just don't know.

You just reminded me of another flaw in this latest theory. Aren't voter rolls public? I have a copy of registered voters in DC. All you have to do is fill out this form:

https://www.dcboee.org/pdf_files/Data_Request_Form.pdf

Why would Russians have to hack into databases when they could just fill out a bunch of forms?

If a Russian spy working at Cambridge stole Facebook profiles, why would he use a Trump server to send it to a Russian bank? There are so many better options that would be less easily identified by counter-intelligence.

The more I think about it, the crazier this theory looks.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Following up on the bolded...if in fact the voter rolls were extracted and facebook profiles were targeted, and it was done through this server, then it would not be unimportant. A lot of ifs, but we just don't know.

You just reminded me of another flaw in this latest theory. Aren't voter rolls public? I have a copy of registered voters in DC. All you have to do is fill out this form:

https://www.dcboee.org/pdf_files/Data_Request_Form.pdf

Why would Russians have to hack into databases when they could just fill out a bunch of forms?

If a Russian spy working at Cambridge stole Facebook profiles, why would he use a Trump server to send it to a Russian bank? There are so many better options that would be less easily identified by counter-intelligence.

The more I think about it, the crazier this theory looks.

I have no doubt that Cambridge Analytica uses Facebook data, voter rolls and other data sources, but I'm missing where the notion that it went via Trump's server and the Russians comes from. Each of those is a separate item.

It sounds like you are saying Louise Mensch somehow conflated the two but I haven't seen that anywhere.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Following up on the bolded...if in fact the voter rolls were extracted and facebook profiles were targeted, and it was done through this server, then it would not be unimportant. A lot of ifs, but we just don't know.

You just reminded me of another flaw in this latest theory. Aren't voter rolls public? I have a copy of registered voters in DC. All you have to do is fill out this form:

https://www.dcboee.org/pdf_files/Data_Request_Form.pdf

Why would Russians have to hack into databases when they could just fill out a bunch of forms?

If a Russian spy working at Cambridge stole Facebook profiles, why would he use a Trump server to send it to a Russian bank? There are so many better options that would be less easily identified by counter-intelligence.

The more I think about it, the crazier this theory looks.

I have no doubt that Cambridge Analytica uses Facebook data, voter rolls and other data sources, but I'm missing where the notion that it went via Trump's server and the Russians comes from. Each of those is a separate item.

It sounds like you are saying Louise Mensch somehow conflated the two but I haven't seen that anywhere.

That is in the article to which the OP linked:

The Alfa Bank server in Trump Tower provided fresh evidence for the granting of the FISA warrant, I reported. (this is a fact). However, the warrant was broader than merely looking at the server metadata. It explicitly covered US persons caught up in the inquiry and explicitly covered the right for the FBI to read intercepts and hear tapes and other materials on US persons, related to this inquiry, already existing and provided by intelligence from a Baltic state ally, which I name tonight as Lithuania.

I believe the Alfa Bank server was sending back to Russia information on the hacked voter databases and how they could be micro-targeted.

[Anonymous]

Quite attributed to Mensch on a blog site that is apparently down.