Unanswered Questions Trail a Trump DOJ Official With a Russia Tie
On October 31, 2016, just eight days before the presidential election, my colleague Franklin Foer reported that computer servers for Russia’s biggest private bank appeared to have been pinging servers registered to the Trump Organization during the election, raising questions about potential collusion. The Trump campaign, the Trump Organization, and Alfa Bank all issued denials in response, and Alfa, in March 2017, hired the attorney Brian Benczkowski, a partner at Kirkland & Ellis who just months earlier had headed the Trump administration’s transition team at the Justice Department. Questions about the pinging servers have never been fully resolved, and Foer has subsequently written about the various competing theories.
Two weeks ago, as all eyes were on Donald Trump’s European tour and his impending meeting with Vladimir Putin, Benczkowski was narrowly confirmed by the Senate to lead the Justice Department’s criminal division, even though
