COMRADES?

Report: FBI Probes Trump Organization, Russian Bank Ties

Thousands of server lookups.

The FBI’s counterintelligence team is still looking into the potential ties between a Russian bank and the Trump Organization—despite a wide public dismissal of the possible connection several months ago, CNN reports. The same team that is looking into Russian interference in the 2016 election is conducting the inquiry on the Trump company and an Alfa Bank computer server. Internet data allegedly shows that last summer, a server owned by Alfa Bank accessed the contact information for a server in use by the Trump Organization thousands of times. The data shows that the server looked up that information so often that it represents 80 percent of all recorded lookups. According to experts, that activity could point to an intent to communicate by email during that time period. But information surrounding the connection is vague, and nobody has yet provided any evidence suggesting that the servers actually communicated. Richard Clayton, a computer researcher at Cambridge University, told CNN: “It’s not so much a smoking gun as a faint whiff of smoke a long way away. Maybe there’s something else going on. It’s hard to tell.”