Russia begins attempted coverup of its communications with Trump Tower email server
The attempted coverup is often what unwittingly proves the crime that’s trying to be covered up. In this case, several months after it was discovered that an email server in Trump Tower was communicating almost exclusively with a Russian bank during the campaign, it still hasn’t been proven that those communications were an effort to rig the election or commit any crime. But now Russia is making itself look more guilty by belatedly trying to cover it up.
After Slate initially reported on this dedicated email server traffic between Trump Tower and Russian government-controlled Alfa Bank in October, CNN followed up last week by reporting that the FBI is still investigating the matter. That’s led Alfa Bank to go on the offensive. It’s now claiming that unidentified hackers out there have been creating dummy traffic between Alfa and Trump Tower to try to create the appearance that the two have been communicating with each other.
Alfa Bank is offering no evidence to back up this claim. Nor has it offered to explain why any hacker would do such a thing. But Alfa has taken the rather odd step of hiring a New York cybersecurity firm to investigate the supposed hackers who supposedly tried to create the false appearance that Alfa and Trump Tower were communicating with each other. Alfa’s belated attempt at covering up its communications with Trump Tower, by essentially claiming it’s being framed by some ill-defined bogey man with no clear motivation, serves no purpose if Alfa is innocent. Instead it’s the kind of thing you tend to do when you’re guilty, and you think your guilt is about to be firmly demonstrated, and you want to muddy the waters first so as to make it more difficult for your guilt to be demonstrated.
And yet here’s Alfa Bank, which is essentially a branch of the Kremlin, telling CNN today that some bogey man is trying to frame it. This move makes no sense unless Alfa’s communications with Trump Tower were in fact criminal in nature to begin with. And it suggests another shoe is about to drop when it comes to this email server. Contribute to Palmer Report
