Part 3 of 3
Allegedly Sharing Non-Public Internet Data
While the charge against Sussmann concerned his alleged lie to Baker over whether he was representing anyone in sharing the Alfa Bank intel, a larger issue raised in the indictment concerns Joffe’s alleged sharing of internet company data with the researchers.
Joffe “caused employees of two companies in which he had an ownership interest to search and analyze their holdings of public and non-public internet data,” the indictment charges. Also, according to the indictment, the data Georgia Tech accessed included the “DNS data of an Executive Branch of office of the U.S. government, which Internet Company-1 had come to possess as a sub-contractor in a sensitive relationship between the U.S. government and another company.”
While the purpose of providing Georgia Tech access to that data was to enable researchers “to protect U.S. networks from cyberattacks” from July 2016 through at least February 2017, the indictment alleged, Lorenzen, Antonakakis, and Dagon “also exploited Internet Company-1’s data and other data to assist Tech Executive-1 in his efforts to conduct research concerning Trump’s potential ties to Russia,” including the Alfa-Bank allegations that Sussmann later fed the FBI.
In one email dated July 31, 2016, Antonakakis wrote Joffe with a subject line of “one more data request.” That email and all of the others provided to The Federalist by Georgia Tech used Joffe’s Centergate.com email address. Notably, in this email Antonakakis quipped that he was not a Joffe customer yet, in an apparent reference to the fact that the government contract under which Georgia Tech would purchase services from Joffe’s internet company had not yet been awarded.
An individual at Neustar, Steve DeJong, who was not on the original email, replied three hours later in an email with the “one more data request” subject line, saying he received the request.
Whether these emails concerned the Alfa Bank project or the proof of concept project is unknown, and neither Neustar nor De Jong responded to requests for comment.
None of the other emails expressly discussed the Alfa Bank project either, but several were nonetheless suggestive, such as an email from Antonakakis to Lorenzen with Joffe CCed, dated August 20, 2116, with the regarding line saying “mta,” which likely means “message transfer agent” or “mail transfer agent,” which is an internet email system that transfers electronic mail from one computer to another.
In the text of that email, Antonakakis wrote: “The conclusion here is that there is no conclusion.” Hours later Joffe sent an email to Antonakakis, Dagon, and Lorenzen, with “fist analysis” as the subject, likely meaning “first analysis.” “F-ck,” followed by “<sigh>” was all he said.
While it is possible these exchanges concerned the proof of concept work the researchers needed to complete for the upcoming government contract, the timing of the emails fits the Sussmann indictment’s allegations.
“On or about August 19, 2016, Researcher-1 queried internet data maintained by Internet Company-1 for the aforementioned mail1.trump-email.com domain,” the indictment alleged, continuing: He “then emailed Tech Executive-1 and others a list of domains that had communicated with it—none of which appeared to have links to Russia.”
Another email shows Lorenzen, on August 21, 2021, emailing Antonakakis and Dagon about establishing a Github account to serve as “a private repository for keeping the list of domains in sync.” If this work concerned the government contract for proof of concept, Lorenzen’s suggestion for a Github account seems strange.
Neither Lorenzen nor Dagon’s attorneys responded to a request for comment, but Antonakakis’ attorney unequivocally stated that Antonakakis did not use a Github account.
Another question the documents did not answer concerned whether there were any restrictions placed on the Georgia Tech researchers during the pre-contract, “proof of concept stage.” The eventual contract Georgia Tech signed limited the access, use, or disclosure of government data, but according to the indictment, Joffe and his connected companies provided the researchers access to the various data they supposedly then “exploited.”
Here, then, really, are the questions needing answers: Did Joffe improperly provide Lorenzen, Dagon, or Antonakakis access to data? If so, did they know that? Or if the data shared was properly accessed, were there any restrictions on the use or publication of that data? If so, what were they?
Aside from Sussmann’s alleged lie to the FBI, this case may be nothing more than a further expose of how the liberal media feeds a false narrative to benefit its politics of choice—but that is bad enough by itself.
https://thefederalist.com/2021/11/17/emails-show-researchers-who-alleged-trump-links-to-russian-alfa-bank-were-anti-trump/