#SussmannTrial Next up was FBI Special Agent Scott Hellman. He was part of the team that examined the materials that Sussmann gave Baker. These included two thumb drives and three white papers- alleged evidence of the secret communication channel between Trump and Alfabank. /12.

#SussmannTrial Hellman testified that the materials purporting to support Sussmann's allegations consisted of: - technical data such as website and domain names/numbers; -a narrative summarising the data and explaining authors' conclusions based on their analysis of the data /13

Hellman testified that his team analysed the data and rejected the allegations of “secret communications channel” between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank within a day. "Whoever had written that paper had jumped to some conclusions that were not supported by the data” /14

FBI Special Agent Hellman testified: "Whoever had written that paper had jumped to some conclusions that were not supported by the data. Conclusion that they had found a secret communication between Trump, the Trump organization, and Russia- that just didn't make sense to us" /15

Hellman testified: "Why would a presidential candidate put their own name in the supposedly secret domain name, in a domain name that was easily connectible to the organization; and then why would it be -that computer be connecting directly to another computer in Russia... /16

...if this was all supposed to be a secret communication. So that piece of it just didn't ring true at all" Hellman testified: "Russia would have a much more technical capability to hide communications; and if they were to be secret, that Russia would have the ability to hide /17

...those communications. They wouldn't be so overt and direct between this Trump domain and this Russian domain," FBI Supervisory Special Agent Hellmann testified. #SussmannTrial /18

Government entered into evidence “White Paper #1 ,” one of the documents that Sussmann gave to Baker on September 19, 2016: “The Trump Organization is using a very unusually configured "secret" email server…for current and ongoing email communications with Alfa Bank (Moscow)” /19

The conclusion of the White Paper #1 : “The only plausible explanation for this server configuration is that it shows the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank to be using multiple sophisticated layers of protection in order to obfuscate their considerable recent email traffic.” /20

On September 20, 2016, Special Agent Hellman read the documents provided by Sussmann to Baker. He immediately thought that "the person who had drafted this document was suffering from some mental disability." He wrote: "it feels a little 5150ish" referring to legal code. /21

Within a day of receiving the Sussmann data from Baker, the FBI report concluded that “the research conducted in the report reveals some questionable investigative steps taken and conclusions drawn.” /23

The FBI assessed that "authors searched, via publically available information, for every internet domain that had the word "Trump" in it” Hellman testified: “I did not feel like that was the most expeditious way. They were just looking for key terms. It didn’t make sense to me/24

The FBI September 2016 assessment said: “It appears suspicious that the presumed suspicious activity began approximately three weeks prior to the stated start of the investigation conducted by the researcher.” Hellman testified that he found it "conveniently coincidental." /25

#SussmannTrial FBI SSA Hellman testified regarding the authors of the Trump-Alfa paper: “I did not feel that they were objective in the conclusions that they came to. The assumption that you would have to make was so far-reaching that it just didn’t make any sense.” /26

Agent Hellman testified that his assessment of the Trump-Alfa documents was sent to FBI Chicago who were "performing special investigation and they were going to be doing some further analysis, and we were to provide our analysis" /27

#SussmannTrial Hellman stated that he believes the FBI Chicago then opened an investigation. He had “no involvement in the investigation” but had brief communications with agents in Chicago. “Chicago had looked at the data further and they agreed with our assessment…/28

"...that there was no secret communications channel between the Trump Organization and Russia.” SSA Hellman testified that “the motivation of whoever is giving me the information is very important."/29 #SussmanTrial

Hellman testified that "knowing where the data comes from gives me context regarding how much I believe in the data, how authentic it is, do I believe it's real, and do I trust it." Political affiliation of the source would matter when deciding whether to open an investigation/30

SSA Hellmann testified that knowledge that the source of the data had a business interest or relationship with the U.S. government is important to an FBI agent "to help me understand how truthful the data might be." /31 #SussmannTrial

Hellmann testified that it's important to know "if someone is providing the data on someone else's behalf, I'm going to want to know who that someone else is so I can understand what their motivations might be for providing the data." /32

In cross-ex of Agent Hellman, the defense revealed Rodney Joffe as the source of some of the data for the Trump-Alfa investigation by him a memo from defense witness agent Thomas Grasso that was forwarded to Hellman containing information from an "anonymous reporter. (Joffe) /33