With the presidential election a week away, the Donald Trump campaign is denying extensive reports by Slateand The New York Timesthat a Trump server was in communication with a Russian bank.
SEE ALSO:It's war: U.S. officially blames Russia for recent hacksOn Monday, Slatepublished a piece by Franklin Foer that dives deep into the supposed connection. Per Foer's story, computer scientists described as "malware hunters" were on the lookout for any attempts to hack the Trump campaign following the news of the Democratic National Committee email hack.
Instead of a hack, though, what they found was perhaps more interesting and mysterious: irregular pinging between a Trump server based in the organization's Fifth Avenue tower in New York and Moscow-based Alfa Bank.
The deep dive taken by these experts, particularly one known by his handle "Tea Leaves," came to some conclusions that only heightened the confusion:
The server handled a small load, too small to be used simply for marketing purposes.
Direct pinging resulted in error messages which indicated it only communicated with a few private addresses
And traffic peaked at moments of "political happenings" like the conventions and the DNC leak.
Of course, there's an ongoing question regarding the veracity of the logs that Foer attempts to tease out by chatting with a host of other experts. But, so far, there's nothing that provides a firm answer.
The Trump campaign denied both to Foer and the public that there was anything untoward going on. Said spokeswoman Hope Hicks to Foer, "The current traffic on the server from Alphabank's [sic] IP address is regular DNS server traffic—not email traffic."
Alfa Bank via a PR firm also denied the connection, telling Foer, "Neither Alfa Bank nor its principals, including Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven, have or have had any contact with Mr. Trump or his organizations."
And the Trump campaign shared the following statement on Monday evening.
Tweet may have been deleted
Meanwhile, the FBI has been investigating the communications, too, and told the Timesthat there doesn't appear to be anything nefarious happening., Rather, it suggests an "innocuous explanation, like a marketing email or spam, for the computer contacts."
Yet the FBI's assertion is unlikely to quiet speculation.
On the contrary, there are new firestorms heating up in terms of the Trump organization and potential ties to Russia. NBC News reported Monday night that the FBI has been investigating Ukrainian and Russian ties to Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, who strongly denies the allegations.
And there's a report from Mother Jonesciting a "former senior intelligence officer" that there's evidence that the ties between Trump and the Russian government are very direct.
These stories have all followed a fiery letter from Harry Reid, the senate minority leader, addressed to FBI director James Comey in the wake of Comey's announcement last week of a new investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email server while Secretary of State.
In his letter, Reid outright accused the FBI of sitting on information directly linking Trump and Russia.
In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government – a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Trump praises at every opportunity. The public has a right to know this information.
It's unlikely that email investigation, centered on Clinton aide Huma Abedin and messages found on a computer owned by her estranged husband and controversy magnet Anthony Weiner, will wrap by Election Day.
Neither, it seems, will the question of Trump's relationship with Russia.
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