The report is the latest allegation questioning links between Donald Trump and Russia.
A report on Monday claimed that a Trump Organisation server was used to send or receive communications with the Russian private bank, Alfa Bank.
A Slate article said that the activity on the server indicated “a sustained relationship between a server registered to the Trump Organisation and two servers registered to an entity called Alfa Bank”, which is Russia's largest private commercial bank.
The report is the latest allegation questioning links between the US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russia.
The Trump campaign has denied the allegations. “First of all, it’s not a secret server. The email server, set up for marketing purposes and operated by a third-party, has not been used since 2010. The current traffic on the server from Alphabank’s [sic] IP address is regular DNS server traffic – not email traffic,” Trump campaign press secretary Hope Hicks is quoted as saying by The Gaurdian.
“To be clear, The Trump Organisation is not sending or receiving any communications from this email server,” Hicks continued. “The Trump Organisation has no communication or relationship with this entity or any Russian entity.”
In a statement, Hillary for America senior policy adviser Jake Sullivan declared the story proof of “the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow”. “This secret hotline may be the key to unlocking the mystery of Trump’s ties to Russia. It certainly seems the Trump Organisation felt it had something to hide, given that it apparently took steps to conceal the link when it was discovered by journalists," she said.
Media report claims that the rumour of these allegations have been circulating in Washington for weeks. However, the New York Times on Monday reported that “the FBI ultimately concluded that there could be an innocuous explanation, like a marketing email or spam, for the computer contacts”.
According to The Guardian, a spokesperson for Alfa Bank said that the allegations made in the Slate report were “patently false” and that a cybersecurity firm hired by the bank to investigate the matter believed the activity may have been “caused by a spam attack”.
“Neither Alfa Bank nor its principals, including Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven, have or have had any contact with Mr. Trump or his organisations. Fridman and Aven have never met Mr Trump nor have they or Alfa Bank had any business dealings with him. Neither Alfa nor its officers have sent Mr. Trump or his organisations any emails, information or money. Alfa Bank does not have and has never had any special or exclusive internet connection with Mr. Trump or his entities," it said.
Donald Trump in the past has praised Russian president Vladimir Putin and has even refused to condemn Russia for its cyber attack on the Democratic party's emails, despite evidence from US intelligence officials.
The New York billionaire has also worked with Russian business interests in real estate projects.“Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia,” Trump's son Donald Trump Jr said in 2008, reports The Guardian.
The Slate report is based on interviews with three anonymous domain name system (DNS) specialists and several academics with expertise in DNS, who concluded that the server in question "was set to accept only incoming communication from a very small handful of IP addresses".
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