# Trump Tower has a direct server connection to a Russia bank **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [October 31, 2016, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-tower-has-a-direct-server-connection-to-a-russia-bank/770309 "2016-10-31T22:32:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Happy\_Lendervedder](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/happy_lendervedder/32/8488_2.png) [@Happy\_Lendervedder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Lendervedder)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2017, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-tower-has-a-direct-server-connection-to-a-russia-bank/770309/81 "2017-05-29T13:16:01Z")
> [@Merneith](#): > > Your own link shows that Dick DeVos is still listed on the board of Spectrum Health as an Emeritus Trustee. He’s a permanent board member, even if he’s currently not the official chairman. (And he only stepped down recently, since he was elected chair in September 2015 for a two year term). > > Here’s an article about that - > > [http://www.grbj.com/articles/83491-health-system-names-board-officers](http://www.grbj.com/articles/83491-health-system-names-board-officers) > > I’ll agree that it’s a stretch to say that DeVos personally runs Spectrum but there’s no denying that DeVos is a major power at Spectrum. His connection to the Trump admin via his wife’s cabinet position (and her brother’s attempt to connect Vlad & Donald) just makes the corruption smell a little sharper. Like I said, the DeVos family pulls a lot of strings and has a lot of influence with their money, but my point was: to say that he “led” Spectrum health is incorrect (even as board chair) and that the DeVos family “owned” Spectrum is also incorrect. That’s all. No need to stretch stories for this family and administration, when there’s so much batshit insane stuff right there in the truth. Fighting ignorance and all that. ---
**Author:** ![Merneith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/57b2e6/32.png) [@Merneith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merneith)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2017, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-tower-has-a-direct-server-connection-to-a-russia-bank/770309/82 "2017-05-30T02:46:08Z")
The point, for the purposes of this thread is that Trump Tower’s mystery server, like Donald Trump’s friends, the DeVos family, is directly connected to Spectrum Health. ---
**Author:** ![crucible](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@crucible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crucible)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2017, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-tower-has-a-direct-server-connection-to-a-russia-bank/770309/83 "2017-05-30T13:48:56Z")
Just goes to show you. When you have a reputation for high-mindedness, for honesty in your private and public life, for transparency in your relationships…people might hear a story like this and easily shrug it off or expect a good reason for it. When your whole life has been devoted to building an edifice of lies, thuggery, bullying, skulduggery, illegal business dealings and failure to keep your promises…well, then, something like this is just more fuel for the funeral byre, or, at least, the march to the 2018 polls. Thrump, and most of the Republicans who support him, are only worthy of being trampled into the ground. ---
**Author:** ![Frankenstein\_Monster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ccd318/32.png) [@Frankenstein\_Monster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frankenstein_Monster)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2017, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-tower-has-a-direct-server-connection-to-a-russia-bank/770309/84 "2017-05-30T21:21:34Z")
> [@Merneith](#): > > It’s been important all along, but the FBI wanted to downplay it. They’re still looking into it. Here’s an article from March - > > [**Sources: FBI investigation continues into ‘odd’ computer link between Russian bank and Trump Organization**](http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/09/politics/fbi-investigation-continues-into-odd-computer-link-between-russian-bank-and-trump-organization/) Good article by CNN. Note it correctly refrains from saying the server was in the Trump Tower (it notes the server was located in a data center in Pennsylvania). Stupid detail I know, but it still grates me as a nerd when people add these blatantly wrong facts to their conspiracies. > [@](#): > > From May 4 until September 23, the Russian bank looked up the address to this Trump corporate server 2,820 times – more lookups than the Trump server received from any other source. > > As noted, Alfa Bank alone represents 80% of the lookups, according to these leaked internet records. > > Far back in second place, with 714 such lookups, was a company called Spectrum Health. > > Spectrum is a medical facility chain led by Dick DeVos, the husband of Betsy DeVos, who was appointed by Trump as U.S. education secretary. > > Together, Alfa and Spectrum accounted for 99% of the lookups. There is no possible logical explanation for this. My conclusion: somebody planted those faked DNS queries (spoofed IP addresses and all) in order to try and manufacture a Trump scandal. ---
**Author:** ![Merneith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/57b2e6/32.png) [@Merneith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merneith)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2017, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-tower-has-a-direct-server-connection-to-a-russia-bank/770309/85 "2017-05-31T02:49:09Z")
Yeah, that’s probably it. And when Erik Prince was in the Seychelles trying to set up a back channel for Vlad & Donald, they probably just wanted to swap Pokemon. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2017, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-tower-has-a-direct-server-connection-to-a-russia-bank/770309/86 "2017-05-31T02:59:47Z")
> [@Merneith](#): > > The point, for the purposes of this thread is that Trump Tower’s mystery server, like Donald Trump’s friends, the DeVos family, is directly connected to Spectrum Health. You don’t think it’s significant that CNN exaggerated Mr. DeVos’ role? ---
**Author:** ![Merneith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/57b2e6/32.png) [@Merneith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merneith)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2017, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-tower-has-a-direct-server-connection-to-a-russia-bank/770309/87 "2017-05-31T04:14:51Z")
No, because I don’t think CNN really exaggerated Dick DeVos’ role, either in Spectrum, where’s he’s a permanent trustee board member (with a hospital named after his mom,) or in Donald’s repeated attempts to evade US intelligence by establishing private party lines to Vladimir Putin. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration on CNN’s part to call De Vos a leader of Spectrum Health, given that I quoted the CEO of Spectrum describing De Vos as a “valuable and committed leader” on the occasion of his (De Vos’) election as chairman of the board of trustees. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2018, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-tower-has-a-direct-server-connection-to-a-russia-bank/770309/88 "2018-02-20T21:43:50Z")
> [@Frankenstein\_Monster](#): > > Good article by CNN. Note it correctly refrains from saying the server was in the Trump Tower (it notes the server was located in a data center in Pennsylvania). Stupid detail I know, but it still grates me as a nerd when people add these blatantly wrong facts to their conspiracies. > > There is no possible logical explanation for this. My conclusion: somebody planted those faked DNS queries (spoofed IP addresses and all) in order to try and manufacture a Trump scandal. The son-in-law of the founder of Alfa bank was arrested by Mueller’s team today for, in part, not turning over September 2016 emails to the investigators. I am sure this is purely coincidental to the events detailed in this thread, many of which also occurred in September 2016. > **[Dutch lawyer pleads guilty to lying about interaction with Rick Gates | CNN...](https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/20/politics/robert-mueller-rick-gates/index.html)** > > A European lawyer pleaded guilty Tuesday to lying to investigators in Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation, after he covered up his discussions with former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates and a business associate based in Ukraine in... ---
**Author:** ![Frankenstein\_Monster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ccd318/32.png) [@Frankenstein\_Monster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frankenstein_Monster)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2018, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-tower-has-a-direct-server-connection-to-a-russia-bank/770309/89 "2018-02-22T00:42:51Z")
Plenty of scandal among Trump and his pals, but the fake Trump Tower secret server ain’t one. (I read your link. It was about the [2012 Scadden report](https://freedomhouse.org/blog/disturbing-role-american-consultants-yanukovych-ukraine) fallout, which is a Manafort scandal. Not much to do with Trump, as such, except for his poor judgment in hiring Manafort.) I’m not taking a position on Trump’s scandals. I’m taking a position on people presenting plainly false statements about tech that I understand. It now seems the basic facts of this scandal were not even true. Turns out those two secret machines, Alfa and Spectrum Health, were _not_ the only ones making the DNS requests after all, as had been stated (and which I thought was not possible). Plus, the requests happened continuously over a long period of time, not on a few specific occasions. [This site](http://ljean.com/NetworkData.php) shows some purported DNS logs. I took a quick peek with awk|sort|uniq showing that one set indeed has only Alfa and Spectrum, but another one has those two along with others. (Which is the correct one?) In all cases they show continuous traffic over a four month period. [This account](https://theintercept.com/2016/11/01/heres-the-problem-with-the-story-connecting-russia-to-donald-trumps-email-server/) says another researcher found more than 19 requesters. It also mentions and debunks some further plainly false scandal embellishments, like the Spectrum machine being a Tor node (hey, who made that up?) Plus they have actual samples of spam sent with the offending Trump domain name. There was no secret communication between Trump and Alfa Bank. It was open communication with many parties, resulting from Trump’s email contractor sending out ordinary business email spam to contacts all over the world. Whatever one believes about Trump scandals, this one’s fake. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2018, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-tower-has-a-direct-server-connection-to-a-russia-bank/770309/90 "2018-02-22T01:05:40Z")
I am quite fine in conceding your overall point of your expertise and technical analysis of the server(s), but the fact remains that neither of us can attest to what the _intentions_ were of the people who (a) set it/them up, or (b) sent emails. Even the Intercept gets this, however obliquely: > [@](#): > > Could it be that Donald Trump used one of his shoddy empire’s spam marketing machines, one with his last name built right into the domain name, to secretly collaborate with a Moscow bank? Sure. At this moment, there’s literally no way to disprove that. But there’s also literally no way to prove it, and such a grand claim carries a high burden of proof. (Obliquely: Such a grand claim that this server has NOTHING to do with Trump/Russia also carries a high burden of proof. Which, in fact, is the standard of this Board.) Admitting that Trump is a walking scandal which affects his pals and then declaring this server had absolutely nothing to do with Trump’s “issues” with Russia is, well, inconsistent. At best we can both agree that, frankly, not enough is yet known to either damn _or_ exonerate and that this merely shows the toxicity of being, however remotely, associated with Donald J Trump. ---
**Author:** ![Frankenstein\_Monster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ccd318/32.png) [@Frankenstein\_Monster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frankenstein_Monster)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2018, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-tower-has-a-direct-server-connection-to-a-russia-bank/770309/91 "2018-02-22T13:21:40Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > …declaring this server had absolutely nothing to do with Trump’s “issues” with Russia… Okay, I see where I declared that. You’re right, I got carried away. We don’t have much info about what that Trump server did. We have no communication logs or disk contents or list of running processes. We have no proof that it WASN’T a secret Trump/Russia communications channel. What we have is people deliberately distorting what little info there is, and making blatantly false claims about it. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2018, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-tower-has-a-direct-server-connection-to-a-russia-bank/770309/92 "2018-02-22T14:23:16Z")
Well, saying the smoke in Trump tower may be tied to the conflagration in the White House isn’t exactly “blatantly making a false claim.” ---
**Author:** ![Frankenstein\_Monster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ccd318/32.png) [@Frankenstein\_Monster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frankenstein_Monster)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2018, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-tower-has-a-direct-server-connection-to-a-russia-bank/770309/93 "2018-02-22T15:57:33Z")
I meant the blatantly false statements about what some technical detail or another means (“That’s a Tor exit node!”). I can’t find the original .xyz mirror anymore to find examples, but anyway whole thing has now turned out to be one giant false claim (“Eighty-seven percent of the DNS lookups involved the two Alfa Bank servers!”) so it’s really just one big scam. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2020, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-tower-has-a-direct-server-connection-to-a-russia-bank/770309/94 "2020-04-28T23:32:12Z")
In followup: 1. The FBI does seem to have legitimately ruled out the Trump server connection, according to Horowitz. 2. Accusations against Alfa Bank were first brought up directly by Hillary Clinton’s people and given directly to Steele to investigate. > **[Christopher Steele claims Clinton lawyer fed him debunked claim about Russian...](https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/christopher-steele-claims-clinton-lawyer-fed-him-debunked-claim-about-russian-collusion-in-2016)** > > British ex-spy Christopher Steele testified he met with Democratic lawyers during the 2016 presidential election, and one provided him with now-debunked claims about alleged Trump-Russia collusion as he compiled his dossier. 1. That all said, Mueller did confirm that Eric Prince and Steve Bannon had some weird, mystery meeting with one of the heads of Alfa in the Seychelles. ---
**Author:** ![Kearsen1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Kearsen1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kearsen1)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2020, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-tower-has-a-direct-server-connection-to-a-russia-bank/770309/95 "2020-04-29T13:04:51Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Meh, in reality it is the chicanery from the Republicans that tells me that a lot of what they claim about Clinton is just politics, there might be some truth to their accusations but their captain Ahab behavior makes a lot of people to support Clinton in the end. > > [https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/kevin-mccarthys-truthful-gaffe/2015/09/30/f12a9fac-67a8-11e5-8325-a42b5a459b1e\_story.html?utm\_term=.45256a9e26cb](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/kevin-mccarthys-truthful-gaffe/2015/09/30/f12a9fac-67a8-11e5-8325-a42b5a459b1e_story.html?utm_term=.45256a9e26cb) > > A comic in Something Positive said it better, ““[Between 2 “evils”, I choose the competent one.](http://somethingpositive.net/sp09232016.shtml)”” > > Trump does not even get close to competent people, and that is another reason why one should not vote for him, [his cabinet](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump-energy-idUSKCN0Y41ZP) will be [the stuff of nightmares.](http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/donald-trump-cabinet-picks-include-christie-carson-giuliani-article-1.2722248) logically wouldn’t you want to choose the incompetent one so that LESS evil actually gets accomplished? ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2021, 9:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-tower-has-a-direct-server-connection-to-a-russia-bank/770309/96 "2021-10-30T09:23:15Z")
The story that will never die… John Durham indicted a lawyer for making false representations to the FBI as to who he represented regarding statements made regarding the Alfa bank server, ergo, this server issue got tossed back in the news a few weeks ago: > **[We still don't know why a Trump server has mysterious connections to a...](https://www.businessinsider.com/alfa-bank-trump-organization-link-remains-mystery-after-durham-indictment-2021-10)** > > In 2016, researchers found unexplained connections between a Trump Organization server and the Russian Alfa Bank. They remain a mystery. It’s a pretty lame indictment, will likely not even see a jury, and was done just so Durham could show that he was doing _something_. The problem is that Durham spun a narrative about how everything came about, this narrative really adding very little to the substance of the indictment… akin to if you were indicted for jaywalking but the indictment spun a theory about how you _conspired_ to jaywalk w/o charging you for it. Part of Durhams narrative was that the researchers concluded that nothing was afoot, but their voices were ignored. Indictment here, PDF: [https://www.justice.gov/sco/press-release/file/1433511/download](https://www.justice.gov/sco/press-release/file/1433511/download) Well… In this bizarre rant, Durham mentioned the researchers via ‘code’ (ala ‘Researcher 1’, ‘Researcher 2’), … but the code identifying the researchers was easily broken and they (the researchers) have been receiving death threats from the usual fuckwit Trumpy’s… so they responded yesterday with a letter sent to Garland and Durham, discussed on Maddow: > **[In new letter, tech expert's lawyer insists Alfa-Bank, Trump server data is...](https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/in-new-letter-tech-expert-s-lawyer-insists-alfa-bank-trump-server-data-is-no-hoax-124968005549)** > > Rachel Maddow reports on a new letter to special counsel John Durham and Attorney General Merrick Garland from the lawyer for a tech expert that pushes back on how researchers' findings about interactions between a server related to Alfa-Bank and a... [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-tower-has-a-direct-server-connection-to-a-russia-bank/770309.md?page=4)