Hey Mark, I assume that I am Researcher-1. If so, this statement on page 10, this is wrong.
I was not tasked by anyone. They asked me if this hypothesis is true. I review several hundred
hypotheses and documents every year about their validity. It is part of my job title of being an academic.
Relevant parts in discussion with the government: If my memory serves me right I was asked by the
prosecutor whether I felt pressure by TE1. I told him that nobody had a gun on my head. TE1 was a key
part of my recently accepted proposal, so I had to maintain a good professional relationship with him.
So, of course, I would spend some time investigating a hypothesis. I do this for free when I review more
than 100 academic papers full of hypotheses every year for top conferences and journals. Additionally, I
told them I was trying to convince the company TE1 was working at, to create an innovation program out
of GT. So, of course I will be accommodating the things that I do not consider illegal. To the best of my
understanding, what I did (vis-a-vis; briefly entertain the validity of a hypothesis) is not illegal. Some
would say that is what Academics do --- examine hypotheses and argue on their validity.
On page 11 this statement is misleading.
The way this is written stipulates that we had the DNS data from EOP.
. BTW, getting sample data to write proposals is the most typical
way to write proposals in the research area I work in.
Relevant parts in discussion with the government: If my memory serves me right, what I told the
prosecutor was that I gained limited access to these data in 2016. I used this data to effectively find an
infection in EOP. This infection was reported in my proposal. Then we wrote a report and we gave it to
the US funding agency. GT lost access to EOP data in January of 2017. Which means I had data for 3
months since the five year long project started. So, their stipulation that I had access to EOP for this
project is at best misleading. Worth also pointing out that the vast majority of the time I had access to
the EOP data was when a Democratic president was in office. So their stipulations here --- as I
understand them --- that we might somehow be monitoring the newly elected administration is simply
baseless because we lost access to the EOP data in January/February of 2017.
On page 12, the following statement is not true.
The only thing I did was look at this hypothesis between July and August 2016. The way this was written
stipulates that I was working with or under the guidance of Tech Executive 1 between July 2016 and
February 2017. I cannot understand how they concluded that. Also, none of the data I bought as part of
EA were used in this case. The data in the article was sent to us by others. I am not sure what I could
have done to prevent people from emailing things.
Relevant parts in discussion with the government: If my memory serves me right, I told them that none
of the data I had in the GT cluster could possibly be used to create the report they care about. I will point
you to the [635-639] emails. These emails show two things. First, on April 21st 2017 we were still figuring
out how to systematically download, and work overall with the data Neustar. It also shows that at the
time the data we had from Neustar were from August 1st 2016 until April 21st 2017. This fact alone
proves that several months after the article was published, GT could not have been used to produce the
Trump-Alfabank story article because GT lacked the relevant historic data. This is true because the Trump
Alfabank article contained data from June and July of 2016 (see the “DNS lookup history start date” in
this article:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/10/was_a_server_registered_to_th
e_trump_organization_communicating_with_russia.html)
Furthermore, from the data they sent us I told them that they can recreate the data in the report using
the file “Log of DNS Lookups for mail1-trump-email.com-851 lines.txt” that they sent us. This file
matches the data in the “92_trump-email.json” file, attached to the email [91.pdf]. Again, these datasets
apparently have originated from April. GT did not pay or use these data in any of our programs. These
data were sent to us. I told them this two or three times. Thus, when they say “data and other data to
assist … to the FBI.” that statement is factually wrong and they lied because I told them not only that GT
did not have the right data, but I also explained to them where the right data originated from. Now, I
cannot be sure because I am not a lawyer but because their stipulation is a lie, GT, the data procured for
this project, and the project itself has no real connection to the investigation. Someone else wrote a
report about someone, with their own data, a report that some other people reviewed and provided
feedback on. So, why exactly are the reviewers of the report related to the creation of the report when
they didn’t have the right data to create it, reproduce it and had no involvement in its conception? My
question is rhetorical.
On page 14, this is also misleading.
I reviewed something that was emailed to me. Did not draft or revise anything.
On Page 15, this part has been taken out of context.
They asked me to review it as a non-DNS expert and that is what I did. With the statements made in page
14, Researcher 1 could appear to be a co-conspirator/cooperator of Tech Executive 1 in writing this
document.
Relevant parts in discussion with the government: If my memory serves me right, 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 because this IMHO the best and most polite way I can tell TE1 that
this analysis is not great. So, in this case the statement they made is misleading and/or wrong.
