Jewish Investor Linked To Russia Probe Bought Alt-Right Domain Names
NEW YORK (JTA) — The CEO of an investment firm linked to an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election said he bought website domain names linked to the “alt-right” movement in a personal capacity.
Frederick Intrater, the CEO of Columbus Nova, said he had for years bought domain names related to trending topics in order to later sell them off for a profit, according to a statement posted Thursday on Twitter by Washington Post reporter Eli Rosenberg.
Rosenberg had reported in the Washington Post on Wednesday that the company was listed as the registrant behind alt-right-related domain names created during the 2016 presidential election.
Intrater, who is Jewish, said his purchases of domain names related to the alt-right, a loose right-wing movement that includes white nationalists and anti-Semites, were done in a personal capacity and not related to Columbus Nova although he acknowledged sometimes having used his work emails to register the domains.
Intrater said he had bought the domain names at a time “when there was mainly an ultra-conservative perception of ‘alt right’” and that he later decided to let them expire rather than sell them since they had “connotations that are inconsistent with my moral beliefs.”
“To conclude that I support white supremacy or anti-Semitism is unreasonable given what I’ve described above and also taking into consideration that I am a Jew and son of a Holocaust survivor,” Intrater said.
Intrater reportedly has been interviewed as part of an investigation into Russian interference into the 2016 election being lead by special prosecutor Robert Mueller. The company said on Wednesday that it had hired in 2017 as a consultant Michael Cohen, the lawyer under federal scrutiny for his role in paying off a woman who said she had an extramarital affair with President Donald Trump.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO