President Joe Biden's campaign paid almost $20,000 to Neustar Information Services, a cybersecurity research company recently mentioned in special counsel John Durham's filing on the FBI's probe into Russian election interference, according to The Washington Free Beacon.
Federal Election Commission records show that the Biden campaign paid $18,819 to Neustar in 2020 for accounting and compliance work. The firm came to public attention due to Durham's investigation, which recently said in a court filing that a former Neustar technology executive improperly used his company's access to nonpublic government domain name system data "for the purpose of gathering derogatory information about Donald Trump."
However, attorneys for David Dagon, a scientist involved in analyzing data on Russian-made smartphones called YotaPhones, says that Neustar's work is being mischaracterized.
"The cybersecurity researchers were investigating malware in the White House, not spying on the Trump campaign, and to our knowledge all of the data they used was nonprivate DNS data from before Trump took office," the lawyers told The New York Times.
A spokesperson for Rodney Joffe, the former Neustar tech executive, said that Joffe is apolitical, "contrary to the allegations in this recent filing," and that his contract at the time gave him lawful access to DNS data for threats or breaches.
The researchers found, after a Russian hack of the network in 2015 and 2016, that the proximity of these Russian-made smartphones to the Trump campaign was "deeply" concerning and :prepared a report of their findings, which was subsequently shared with the CIA."
"Yota lookups are extremely concerning if they emanate from sensitive networks that require protection, such as government networks or people running for federal office," Dagon's attorneys added.
When asked for comment on the FEC filing, the White House referred the Washington Free Beacon to the Democratic National Committee, which did not respond.
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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