Exclusive: Researcher Tells Durham He Saw Holes In The Alfa Bank Hoax Before Democrats Shopped It To The FBI

Last week’s cache of documents is not the first to confirm that Manos Antonakakis rejected the Alfa Bank-Trump secret communication theory before it was peddled to the FBI.

A Georgia Tech researcher says he tried to politely throw cold water on a key part of the Russia collusion hoax before the Alfa Bank lie was eventually shopped to the media and government agencies, according to a newly obtained document. This new detail was one of several revealed in a document drafted by George Tech’s Manos Antonakakis—the man branded “Researcher-1” in Special Counsel John Durham’s indictment of Michael Sussmann on one count of lying to FBI General Counsel James Baker.

As I explained previously, “that indictment alleged that when Sussmann met with Baker on September 19, 2016, to provide the FBI attorney with data and ‘white papers’ that purported to establish a secret communication channel between the Trump organization and the Russia-connected Alfa Bank, Sussmann falsely claimed he was not acting on behalf of a client, when in reality Sussmann was working both for the Clinton campaign and an unnamed ‘U.S. technology industry executive’ since confirmed to be Rodney Joffe.”


After the Sussmann indictment dropped, Antonakakis emailed his private lawyers and an attorney and higher-ups at Georgia Tech a document entitled “fallacies” that purported to identify several portions of the indictment he claimed are false or misleading. Last week, The Federalist reported on several details contained in an abbreviated version of the “fallacies” document obtained from Georgia Tech pursuant to a Right-to-Know request.

On Thursday, The Federalist received a more complete version of the summary drafted by Antonakakis two days after news broke of Sussmann’s indictment. That version included Antonakakis’s synopsis of what he told Durham’s team about the Alfa Bank hoax.

“This part has been taken out of context,” Antonakakis wrote of the indictment’s excerpt from an email he had sent to Joffe after reviewing a draft white paper laying out the Alfa Bank-Trump theory. That excerpt to Joffe read: “A DNS expert would poke several holes to this hypothesis (primarily around visibility, about which very smartly you do not talk about). That being said, I do not think even the top security (non-DNS) researcher can refute your statements. Nice!”

Antonakakis initially countered that he was asked “to review it as a non-DNS expert and that is what I did,” before explaining what he had told the special counsel.


“If my memory serves me right,” Antonakakis wrote, “I was explicit when I told them that I was not the creator or even an editor of this document.” “I told them that I said what I said in my review of this document,” Antonakakis continued, “because this IMHO [was] the best and most polite way I can tell [Joffe] that this analysis is not great.”

So, according to Antonakakis, it was manners that caused him to tell Joffe he “very smartly” did not discuss the main “hole” in the Alfa Bank analysis. It was also proper deportment that compelled the Georgia Tech expert to exclaim “Nice!” to the fact that “even the top security (non-DNS) researchers” would be unable to refute Joffe’s statements.

Last week’s cache of documents is not the first to confirm that Antonakakis had rejected the Alfa Bank-Trump secret communication network theory posited in the white paper Sussmann later presented to the FBI’s general counsel. In an earlier email obtained from...

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