Meets today with members of congress and top security access. Members tightlipped about what was discussed but it comes as they discuss their own investigation of russia, the election and President Trumps wiretapping claims. We have a whole lot to get to but i want to start with our breaking news right now. Cnn correspondent pamela brown looking into all of it for us. Pamela, what have you learned after looking into the investigation . Well, don we learned that experts and computer scientists continue to examine whether there was a link between the Computer Organization and the russian bank familiar with this investigation. This is the same server mentioned in a breitbart article that a washington source said that President Trump accused investigators of tapping his phone. Cnn was told there was no fizer warrant on this server, but questions about allegations were widely dismissed months ago as an attempt by them to block spam. But they looked into the same allegation on the russian interference, one expert i spoke to said the server relation is seen as somewhat odd and perp x perplexing and the investigators are not ignoring it, but the fbi has a lot of work to do to determine if there was significance regarding it. The white house did not respond to our request for comments, don . All right, thank you, pamela brown. Now i want to bring in our senator investigator, jose explain what was so odd about this communication. This is highly complex, ill take it slow. What is unique the russian bank repeatedly looked up the address of the particular server in the United States used by the trump administration. In the computer world this is the same thing as somebody looking up somebodys phone number over and over again. While there is not necessarily a phone call it is usually an indication they are attempting to communicate. Now a particular group of scientists who obtained the records that were leaked, records that were never supposed to be made public they were puzzled as to why the organization was doing it. Were they trying to send an email to the organization . This scientist just could not tell. Now they looked update the address some 2,800 times, more lookups the trump group received from any other source. They looked at the server used by a medical facility chain, led by dick devos, the husband of betsy devos, who was chosen as the education secretary. Now computer scientists we spoke to thought it was weird. So all the corporations involved say they never communicated by email with the trump administration, and they have different competing explanations for that server activity. But they have not provided proof that backs that up and they dont agree with what the explanation could be. For example, the russian bank thinks it received trump Hotel Marketing email last summer, but it was not provided with a single email during that time period to back it up. Meanwhile, the American Marketing Organization that would have been sending these emails to the Trump Organization says it was not doing it at the time. We have to make clear that alpha bank at this time has stressed that none of their top executives had any affiliation with the Trump Organization, and in a statement they said that neither alpha bank has had any contact with mr. Trump or its organizations, so we have a continuing mystery. Jose, stand by, well dig into it a little bit more. I want to bring in the former director of National Cyber security center. Rod, thank you for joining us. You heard what pamela and jose just reported. Sources are telling them that this server activity is quote, odd, what do you make of it . What does it mean . Theyre right, it is odd. Its just not very conventional behavior here, don. I mean, to have 2800 lookups for something what was going on it certainly suggests there was an intent to communicate between those two parties. And i really dont buy the spam explanation and here is why. If the trump hotel was sending out Spam Campaign material, it would be going out to hundreds of thousands of people. The idea that the antivirus products, that it was detecting these and then doing a lookup to determine whether it was valid email or not coming in or whether it was what we call a phishing attack, then that would have happened all over the world, everywhere else and c configu configu configured the same way. What is a lookup . The normal material is, if youre at your browser and type in cnn. Com and hit return that sends a look up query to the system and its supposed to respond and say well, the ip address for cnn. Com is a long set of numbers, like 12 numbers with a bunch of periods in the middle of it. So that is a simple lookup. What is not clear to me here is was that a simple lookup, done by the way to get a web page, so if i send an email to you at cnn. Com, that generally would generate maybe even ten or 13 what we call dns lookups. But anyway, it suggests communication between alpha bank and the server of the Trump Organization. The next thing i want to point out is note the quote by the alpha Bank Leadership that the printup polls have no relationship with the leaders. Theyre not saying our staff or employees or contractors or consulta consultants. They may be trying to distance themselves from something that took place, that is pure speculation. I want to bring jose back, these lookups, talk to me more about the lookups, does that suggest anything nefarious . Does it suggest they are trying to hack into the Trump Organization . It could, the reason why somebody would look up somebodys phone number, think about it, if i looked up your phone number 2,000, 800 times, you would want to know why are you trying to contact me . Do you know me, are you trying to contact me . The experts cant explain it. They just want someone to investigate, the fbi, someone to look into this and figure out why was this bank server doing all of these lookups . So my question to you, rod, if you were looking for activity involving the russian bank, what would you look for . Well, you really want to get ahold of the data packets, but the reality is if this were any kind of russian intelligence organization, you would have to say they have packets, went from alpha bank and landed over here and you know by them being encrypted there was a data flow. Nobody has asserted that. You would want to see data traffic. Also i want to comment, the dns system is very open, that lookup or query goes through open servers and passes through a lot of wires between moscow and pennsylvania, and a lot of people pass records in and out. So major operators have huge logs or record books of these lookups that have been done. And some of the parties it seems like have started to share data and have raised these questions about what you know exactly was going on here . Odd, to say the least as you guys explain it. I want to discuss this with our russian expert. Cnn legal analyst laura coats and cnn analyst, steve hall. What is your reaction to pamela and joses reporting . What do you think the Counterintelligence Team is looking for . Well, first, you have this data change, this electronic hand shake for lack of for philosophy majors like me who dont understand all the technical piece of it. But the important thing is, it has raised it to the level of the possible contact between the trump camp and the russians. So that in and of itself is significant. I think another thing that is significant is to remember the role that alpha bank plays. So alpha bank you got to remember in russia there is no rule of law or protection over banks. Basically, alpha bank is an extension of Vladimir Putin. If Vladimir Putin reaches out and tells the head of alpha bank, mr. Freedman, that you know look you have to do x, y or z, because he works inside the russian system and stands a lot to lose if he does not do it. So that is important to remember as well. Exactly what the nature of the communication is and what exactly is going on has i think yet to be determined. There is a lot of stuff to go dug up first. When you said alpha bank is essentially Vladimir Putin, i looked right at matthew, explain that, is he right about that . Im nottacts at this point. We cant prejudge until we know exactly what the evidence will support. Second, i would say if Vladimir Putin was mounting any type of attempt to covertly communicate with the Trump Organization or campaign, the russians have plenty of assets that dont have a giant russian name on them and billions of dollars in assets so you dont think it would be easy to be found it seems like if they wanted to be found, why would they want to be found . This is just not how you do it secretly. You open up an email account, you share a pass word and write in the drafts. That is the Old School Way to do it. Lets bring in my federal prosecutor, laura, what do you think . I think the Unanswered Questions were looking at right now are the very reasons why the fbi is investigating. Right now we dont know whether the communications fall under the hacking, the benign matter. The fact we now have confirmation hearings under way for a Deputy Attorney general who is going to have to oversee this, because clearly any investigation into the russian contacts with the Trump Organization or the Trump Campaign is but the tip of an iceberg. And while we continue on this path we need to know if anybody that is going to oversee the investigation is going to have to be separate from the campaign. What we find now is all the Unanswered Questions makes solid in my mind and congress mind as to why we need somebody to oversee the investigation who is truly, truly distinct. And now the fbis investigation is trying to figure out whether or not this falls into three categories. Whether or not this is somebody contacting the trump server to try to have a spam you know, counteracting spam, which you already heard is kind of being debunked. Whether this is somebody who was simply trying to transfer data, or this was Something Different or if the trump server in fact communicated in return. So we have to kind of take a step back here and say listen, right now its in the infancy stage, but that combined with others that are in the early stage combined with others raises a great deal of smoke. And well be right back with more on what the white house is saying about all of this. Heres to the wildcats til we die. This i gotta try bendy. Spendy weekenders. Whatever kind of weekender you are, theres a hilton for you. Book your weekend break direct at hilton. Com and join the weekenders. At where instead of payinging a befor middlemen,em. We work directly with family farms to deliver Higher Quality ingredients for less than you pay at the store. Get 30 off at blueapron. 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Rod, why dont we have definitive proof of this . Really good question, obviously the dns data has been leaked out, or somebody captured it. Maybe it was a Major Service provider or operator, some operator got that and shared it. It sounds like between some parties. Now they also could have that is what we call meta data, very high level data that suggests that communications have occurred. What we dont have is the packet data, or the record of it moving between the servers. So either they have it or theyre not sharing it or for some reason they dont have it. Its an unanswered part of the story here. Well, this is a great point, we asked ourselves from the beginning, this is one of two things either the data doesnt exist, there are no secret communications so we have not heard of it or no one has leaked it yet. All the computer Scientists Say it needs to be thoroughly investigated. That is all they said. So what seems to be happening now this investigation has shifted from the cyber team at the fbi to the Counterintelligence Team who has been handling any potential leaks from russia in the american election. So what were dealing with right now is the question, was there communication and hopefully well find that out soon. Matthew would have heard from many folks, especially the people who have intimate knowledge of watergate, they said this watergate took two years. And im not suggesting that there is anything there. But to think within just a couple of months of finding this out, there may not be a smoking gun. It could just be drip, drip, drip, and so far that is all we have. Is that enough . Does that sound like russia to you . You know this is one of my big concerns is that we have to walk and chew gum at the same time in this investigation. Right now there is not a russia policy coming from washington. That is true both on the personnel side where we heard jon huntsman is going to be ambassador, but he is not formally appointed, not confirmed. He probably doesnt know what the trump administrations message is, the president tweets one thing, the Vice President and another says another thing, secretary tillerson says it in another hearing. And we cant let the investigation by default become our russia policy. We have to engage with the russians, explain to them look this is how far this thing is going to go. Were not threatening were going to come back and topple your regime if were accusing you of interfering in our elections, if we did that, you dont want to get into a war with Vladimir Putin. And they all dont want to talk about it. When asked about it at press briefings or otherwise, they seem to point to Something Else or just flat out not answer it. This is what we heard from the white house yesterday. Listen to this. I want to be clear on one point which there is no reason that we have to think that the president is the target of any investigation whatsoever. So laura, the truth is that the Justice Department has declined to confirm that that is the case. Was sean spicer wrong to say that . Well, i think politicly speaking on behalf of this boss he is not wrong to say that but its very convenient when you can throw out insinuations and hope one sticks long enough either to divert the fbis investigations. The comments about wiretapping either reveal one or two things, one, that president obama or someone on his staff went and planted a bug in trump tower, which is pretty much a russian spy novel, and highly unlikely, or if they found based on probable cause that he, trump met one of the requirements who is the lawful recipient of a wiretap, meaning he was a Foreign Agent in some way, im not saying that was the case. But if in fact that was the reason why there was a wiretap, you essentially told on yourself. So the reason why you want to say youre not the subject of it at all, it is an attempt at diverting. I wonder if he regrets you want to go back to the godfather, and say turn to your attorney before you say anything and lean into the microphone and say no comment. That is all that is going to help him at this point. You heard pamela say there was no fiso warrant. What does that say about the claim he was wiretapped. . Like so much else that the president said about this, it doesnt hang together particularly well. There is a high bar to get a fisa warrant, its agent of a foreign power kind of thing. That doesnt make a whole lot of sense, this is going to be a long investigation, a good part of it will be a counterintelligence investigation, which is the nastiest most in the weeds kind of thing you can do that requires a great deal of attention to detail and focus and then you inject into all that the politics and presidency, yeah, everybody here whose comment is absolutely right. This is going to be a really long deaifficult painful road a we have to make sure that other policies are not in play. What is surprising, we are more surprised by it every single day. Because if youre the current prosecute president of the United States and you accuse the former president of the United States and you accuse him of committing a crime of course everybody wants to get to the bottom of it. This was a tweet of huge consequences that i dont think that this current president even thought about it before he sent it out. Matthew. Yeah, if there is one thing that velarladimir putin, whethe is celebrating or not celebrating is that there is chaos in american politics and that his vision of american government, which is basically house of cards that is how he thinks everything really is. He thinks everybodys hands are dirty and theyre prosecuting everybody all the time all in a battle for power just like in the kremlin he is watching it take place in front of his own eyes. He has elections coming up next year to be reelected president of russia. Matthew, before i let anyone go, if you want to raise your hand, does this reporting bring us any closer to finding out what the real connectio