Trump Tower shut down its Russia email server just before FISA warrant was allegedly granted

[dixiegrrrrl]

Snip..........there is evidence that a federal judge granted a FISA eavesdropping warrant to the FBI for Trump Tower’s Russian email server shortly before the election. And it appears Trump Tower knew that warrant was coming.

there was evidence a FISA warrant had been granted for the Trump Tower Russian email server in October. But as it turns out, Daily Kos has determined that the email server had been shut off for good on September 23rd. This suggests that the operator of the email server was aware the FBI was onto it, and shut it off to prevent its data from being monitored. There is also a Carter Page connection.

As I pointed out earlier today, the Trump Tower Russian email server saw its biggest data spikes while Donald Trump campaign adviser Carter Page was visiting Russia, suggesting it was used to communicate with him abroad. But three days after the email server was shut down, Page announced he had left the campaign amid increasing questions about his Russia ties.

This now paints a picture of Trump Tower realizing that the FBI was closing in on its Russia connections, quickly shutting down its Russia email server just before an eavesdropping warrant could be granted, and also abruptly ejecting Russian operative Carter Page from the campaign entirely because he had become too much of a liability. But now Page is asserting that Donald Trump himself was behind the Republican National Convention plot to change the party platform to benefit Russia.

http://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/trump-tower-shut-down-its-russia-email-server-just-before-fisa-warrant-was-allegedly-granted/1796/

If this is all true, and I have no reason to think it is not, I am betting Page shuold avoid tall buildings, small planes, and un-tested food. and women with spray bottles.

[RKP5637]

1. Trump, is spinning a web around something and it well might be himself! n/t

[guillaumeb]

2. Recommended.

Especially Korean women with spray bottles.

And be very careful around polonium. I have heard it is very hazardous when swallowed.

[BumRushDaShow]

3. There were a lot of articles about that server

this past fall and most wanted to dismiss the whole thing. It may need another look given the other info that has come out.

[dixiegrrrrl]

8. Yes...and the above site did report it then

but as you say, probably time for a real look at it.

This means, you know, that Trump's "Obama wiretap" screed was planned yesterday at Mar Lego and based on his apparent awareness of the wiretap of last fall. So to that end, he is not "making it up".
but he has definitely revealed a classified tap.

So, huge attempt at distracting from Russia.....wonder if it will work?

[BumRushDaShow]

12. Thing is

there are also several foreign countries that have supposedly provided intelligence too so I expect that they were "listening in" via their own intel services.

[tblue37]

4. I wonder who gave them the heads-up--maybe someone in the New York FBI office cabal? nt

[dixiegrrrrl]

15. Most probably there.....he has been plugged in for years with NJ and NY

Certainly Ghouliani would tell him....and one never knows where the mob links go to.

If any Congress people knew, I can see some spilling the beans that close to the election.

[LiberalFighter]

39. If this happened and anyone told Rudy they should be in trouble.

To what extent would Rudy be in trouble too? I would think he would especially if he passed the information on.

[Eyeball_Kid]

51. Rudy knows why and how Building 7 collapsed. He IS the keeper of dark secrets.

[tblue37]

58. As well as the Keeper of the Crypt! nt

[NewRedDawn]

42. No doubt.

They are a den of right wing loons!

[Cosmocat]

49. You know pos Comey knew about this

And STILL tipped the scales in 45s favor.

[tblue37]

5. Maybe our allies' intelligence agencies have information collected before the FISA

warrant was granted. (One can hope.)

[lapucelle]

6. Clapper told Chuck Todd today on MTP

that there was no FISA warrant for Trump Tower that he is aware of.

[SunSeeker]

28. Clapper wouldn't know since the FBI would not have told him.

Clapper did not head the FBI. It is illegal for the CIA to operate domestically. Only the FBI can do that. There would be no reason for the FBI to involve or inform Clapper.

[Blue_Roses]

54. Exactly.

Well said!

[jmg257]

7. What FISA warrant??? Clapper said NO trump FISA warrant was issued.

http://www.mediaite.com/online/i-can-deny-it-former-director-of-national-intelligence-says-no-fisa-wiretap-court-order-against-trump/

Clapper responded. “I will say that the part of the national security apparatus that I oversaw — the DNI — there was no such wiretap activity mounted against the president, the president-elect at that time, or as a candidate, or against his campaign.”
...
“I can deny it,” the former DNI forcefully responded back. He added that there is no FISA court order at Trump Tower, to which Todd expressed genuine surprise.

Someone is fucking lying, and it is getting pretty damn aggravating with all the bullshit "reports" floating around.

[SunSeeker]

30. No, Clapper said he never saw a FISA warrant; that's very different from saying there was none. nt

[jmg257]

44. Ha - yep I guess so.

[AgadorSparticus]

60. ....

[FakeNoose]

34. Let's distinguish between wiretaps and email hacks

I know it's splitting hairs, but maybe Obama can truthfully SAY he never got a wiretap, if all they did was hack the server.

It's two different actions, and maybe no warrant is required for one of them. (Hacking I mean.)

[KittyWampus]

9. Clapper said there was no wire tap on Trump Towers. He would know about it.

[sarah FAILIN]

13. He can also lie about it

No perjury charges on meet the press

[KittyWampus]

14. This is referring to the Alfa Bank server. Which was observed without any need for a FISA warrant.

[dixiegrrrrl]

18. He said no ".FISA"

But.....there were news reports last fall reported the server was tapped.
Here is the Palmer report link to that back then:
http://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/wiretap-donald-trump-judge-russia-fibai/1778/

Waaayyy more interesting is how a group of computer pros stumbled onto the server and its mystery kept them invovled.
a long detailed piece here from Slate, fascinating reading, with far reaching implications about who is really secure, who can really find your fingerprints on the web.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/10/was_a_server_registered_to_the_trump_organization_communicating_with_russia.html

[KittyWampus]

23. As I said, if it's Alfa bank servers, people were watching it without a FISA. No need.

[SunSeeker]

33. No he wouldn't. He was not with the FBI.

It's the FBI that would have gotten the FISA warrant.

[KittyWampus]

36. He was asked and answered clearly that he would have known about it. And he was NOT CIA

as you assert. He was Director of National Intelligence.

[SunSeeker]

40. Either way, he was not FBI. nt

[KittyWampus]

43. No, actually as Director of National Intelligence he would know.

[SunSeeker]

48. Why? FBI investigations, especially something like this, are not disclosed to other agency heads.

The DNI is not in charge of the FBI.

[sheshe2]

10. The plot thickens.

Do we follow the money? The dead bodies or both?

[KittyWampus]

11. I THINK this article is talking about the Alfa Bank servers which weren't wiretapped

as far as I know. But the activity was observed and remarked upon. Some have tried to spin it as innocuous spamming. But the timing is extremely suspicious.

But there was no 'wiretap' nor need for a FISA warrant. People who understand how this works wouldn't have needed any of that.



Levin and Breitbart’s thesis is that the Obama administration used “police state” tactics to undermine Trump, a claim rooted, though a little loosely, in existing reporting. The Guardian has reported that the FBI applied for a Foreign Intelligence Service Act (FISA) warrant last summer to monitor members of the Trump campaign, but was denied in its initial attempt. Last November, former British MP and openly anti-Trump journalist Louise Mensch reported that the FBI had succeeded in its second request for a FISA warrant, which was later confirmed by the BBC.

Such a warrant would only have been granted if the FBI—not the Obama administration—was able to convince a judge that the Trump campaign had credible links to a foreign power.

The key distinction is that this was an FBI investigation, not an order from the White House itself. Commenting on this morning’s tweets, an Obama spokesman told the New York Times that “no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice.” FBI Director James Comey downplayed the existence of such an investigation at the time, perhaps explaining Trump's having just learned about the efforts.

The roots of the FISA warrant were themselves odd. According to both Mensch and the BBC, they centered on a server in Trump Tower found last Spring to have been communicating with Russia’s Alfa Bank, itself reportedly with strong ties to Vladimir Putin. The FBI reportedly came to conclude that the communications were likely innocuous.

One thing that is painfully clear in all of this is the widely divergent frames that can be put around a set of events. Where Trump’s critics see a legal investigation into foreign influence, he (and presumably his supporters) see a “McCarthyist” abuse of power of the same criminal stripe as the Watergate break-in.

http://fortune.com/2017/03/04/trump-wiretapping-fbi-warrent/

[dixiegrrrrl]

25. "see a McCarthyist abuse of power "

Ironic as all hell considering Trump et al is ruling like a power drunk King ....

[longship]

16. Russian e-mail server?????

What fucking Russian e-mail server?

If one is going to put out allegations like "Trump Tower's Russian e-mail server" you had better damned have a better source than Palmer Report.

Let us not tread down this road without credible evidence.

What's next? The Weekly World News?

[mythology]

19. This. The Palmer Report isn't credible.

[dixiegrrrrl]

32. see my reply, below. n/t

[Cha]

55. Thanks for your work on this, dixiegirrrrl

.

[dixiegrrrrl]

31. These?

http://fortune.com/2017/03/04/trump-wiretapping-fbi-warrent/

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/10/was_a_server_registered_to_the_trump_organization_communicating_with_russia.html


THIS, from Daily Kos???

I’ve taken up a “weekend” project to perform an independent analysis of the data file that allegedly contains a record of activity—during the months leading up to the election—between a server at Alfa Bank in Russia, the Trump Organization, and a server at the Spectrum Health company in Grand Rapids, Michigan. (See links for Part I and Part II, Part III, Part IV and the original Slate article on this story. The end of this diary lists related links, including to other dkos diaries on this same story.)

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/12/18/1612323/-The-Trump-Server-Files-Part-V-Paul-Manafort-Carter-Page-and-the-Server-Quiet-Periods

Louise Mensch’s original November 7th Heat Street story on the Trump Tower FISA warrant:
https://heatst.com/world/exclusive-fbi-granted-fisa-warrant-covering-trump-camps-ties-to-russia/

[Dr Hobbitstein]

37. Louise Mensch and Heat Street (News Corp)

are also, not credible. Right wing sources, even if they do lean anti-Orange Fucktrumpet.

Look at some other headlines at Heat Street. Not credible.

[dixiegrrrrl]

38. Looks like Fortune, Slate and Daily kos are left, then.

So now we can focus again on the topic.

[Dr Hobbitstein]

45. Slate makes no mention of FISA warrant.

Daily KOS is an opinion blog, and Fortune cites Louise Mensch's unfounded claims.

So... What are we discussing?

[Cha]

56. Thank you.. they're all saying the same thing.

[Cosmocat]

50. This has been known since before the election

Nm

[Dr Hobbitstein]

17. More fake news from Bill Palmer.

If we want to be the party of reason, maybe we should reject ALL fake news sources, not just those on the right.

[tammywammy]

24. +1

[still_one]

27. Exactly. I can't believe they still use this joker as a source

[Cha]

57. I use to read him report on Hillary.. I saw nothing "fake"

[still_one]

61. At least what I have seen with links referring to the Palmer report here, most of the reporting was

not the most accurate.

The links on DU saying that the Supreme Court could disqualify trump and pence after the electoral College vote, and stories such as that, building up false hope, is what moved me to skeptically view his reporting

[LiberalFighter]

41. I reject all fake news regardless of politics. As we all should.

[JTFrog]

52. Exactly.

No matter how much we want it to be so, we need to stop pushing this source as legit.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

20. Rogue NY FBI cabal leak to tRump gang? Sure seems like it. . . nt

[lame54]

21. I guess he didn't mind the FBI leak...

That warned him

[qanda]

22. Comey probably wants to shut down any investigation

Because he would be implicated.

[still_one]

26. The palmerreport? Please, give me a break

[Turbineguy]

29. Carter Page will sing like a bird.

For immunity. Even probation.

[samnsara]

35. this is either true or a big fat smokescreen..either way trump is screwed....

....of being guilty as hell or crazy as hell

[Perseus]

46. Where does Comey fit in all this?

If he aided the Trump campaign, was he also involved in warning them?

If the FBI knew of this connections and the server, and was supposedly getting ready to investigae, why was it reported they wanted Trump to win? Something doesn't fit well into the whole story.

[dixiegrrrrl]

47. and now Comey is saying NO FBI wiretap.

and is firmly contradicting Trump.

If he wanted to Trump to win, did he change his mind once he realized what a horror show he helped elect?

[world wide wally]

53. Lock the fucker up.

We all know he works for Putin and it sounds like there is plenty of proof of it too.
As we fiddle, America burns.

[muriel_volestrangler]

59. Switching off the Trump server happened after the New York Times contacted Alfa Bank

to ask them for an explanation, so there's no need to assume they "realized that the FBI was closing in on its Russia connections"; they realized the media was. From the October Slate article:

In September, the scientists tried to get the public to pay attention to their data. One of them posted a link to the logs in a Reddit thread. Around the same time, the New York Times’ Eric Lichtblau and Steven Lee Myers began chasing the story.* (They are still pursuing it.) Lichtblau met with a Washington representative of Alfa Bank on Sept. 21, and the bank denied having any connection to Trump. (Lichtblau told me that Times policy prevents him from commenting on his reporting.)

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. Or as it is technically diagnosed, it had “SERVFAILed.” (On the timeline above, this is the moment at the end of the chronology when the traffic abruptly spikes, as servers frantically attempt to resend rejected messages.) 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. Weaver told me the Trump domain was “very sloppily removed.” Or as another of the researchers put it, it looked like “the knee was hit in Moscow, the leg kicked in New York.”

Four days later, on Sept. 27, the Trump Organization created a new host name, trump1.contact-client.com, which enabled communication to the very same server via a different route. When a new host name is created, the first communication with it is never random. To reach the server after the resetting of the host name, the sender of the first inbound mail has to first learn of the name somehow. It’s simply impossible to randomly reach a renamed server. “That party had to have some kind of outbound message through SMS, phone, or some noninternet channel they used to communicate (the new configuration),” Paul Vixie told me. The first attempt to look up the revised host name came from Alfa Bank. “If this was a public server, we would have seen other traces,” Vixie says. “The only look-ups came from this particular source.”
...
* Update, Oct. 31, 2016: The article has been updated to make clear that the New York Times reporters learned of the logs independently, not from the Reddit thread.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/10/was_a_server_registered_to_the_trump_organization_communicating_with_russia.html

There's no need to involve Daily Kos, or Palmer, in this - go to the original reporting in Slate, and Louise Mensch sayign teh FISA warrant was granted in October.

[scipan]

62. Exactly.

I was skeptical when I saw the Palmer Report, but after reading the Slate article (especially), and the old NYT article, I'm convinced there was some very unusual communication between the Trump org and Alfa Bank, and the CIA/FBI had reason to be interested.