The researchers were seeing patterns in the data—and the Trump organization’s potential interlocutor was itself suggestive. Alfa Bank emerged in the messy post-Soviet scramble to create a private Russian economy. Its founder was a Ukrainian called Mikhail Fridman. He erected his empire in a frenetic rush—in a matter of years, he rose from operating a window washing company to the purchase of the Bolshevik Biscuit Factory to the co-founding of his bank with some friends from university. Fridman could be charmingly open when describing this era. In 2003, he told the Financial Times, “Of course we benefitted from events in the country over the past 10 years. Of course we understand that the distribution of state property was not very objective…. I don't want to lie and play this game. To say one can be completely clean and transparent is not realistic.”
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Tea Leaves and his colleagues plotted the data from the logs on a timeline. What it illustrated was suggestive: The conversation between the Trump and Alfa servers appeared to follow the contours of political happenings in the United States. “At election related moments, the traffic peaked,” according to Camp. There were considerably more DNS lookups, for instance, during the two conventions.
the exposé!
