Columbus Nova Staffer Claims He Registered Alt-Right Domains For Personal Profit (Exclusive)
A design manager for Columbus Nova, the equity firm at the heart of the controversy surrounding payments to President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen, responded on Thursday to reports the firm purchased alt-right websites in a statement to Mediaite.
It was revealed this week that Columbus Nova, a U.S. equity firm with ties to Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg, paid Cohen $500,000 for consulting in the first half of 2017. The Washington Post later reported that Columbus Nova registered a number of domains for alt-right websites during the 2016 election, starting days after Hillary Clinton delivered a speech calling out the far-right movement.
The domains included Alt-right.co, Alternate-right.com, Alternate-rt.com, Alt-rite.com.
Now, Frederick Intrater, brother of Columbus Nova’s U.S. chief executive Andrew Intrater, is saying in a statement obtained exclusively by Mediaite that he purchased the domain names with his own money, with the intention of selling them for a personal profit. He claims that he sometimes used his Columbus Nova email address to register domain names, but that otherwise there was no connection between the firm and the domains.
“For many years and with my own money, I have purchased internet domain names relating to various then-topical subject matter with the aim of eventually selling them for profit,” Intrater said, in a statement provided by a spokesperson for Columbus Nova. “The only connection to Columbus Nova is that I work there and unfortunately sometimes used my work email address for my personal use and, in this case, to register my ownership of the domain names.”
“I subsequently thought better of the idea of selling domain names which obviously now have connotations that are inconsistent with my moral beliefs,” he added.
In the statement, Intrater also pushed back on allegations of anti-semitism against the firm in light of reports on the domains, explaining that he is “a Jew and the son of a Holocaust survivor.”
Read the full statement here:
“I feel compelled to make a public statement in the wake of lots of publicity which is trying to connect Columbus Nova with supporting white supremacist or antisemitic ideology. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
For many years and with my own money, I have purchased internet domain names relating to various then-topical subject matter with the aim of eventually selling them for profit. Among the more than 100 domain names I have ultimately purchased, there were some names with “alt right” connotations bought at a time when there was mainly an ultra-conservative perception of “alt right”. The only connection to Columbus Nova is that I work there and unfortunately sometimes used my work email address for my personal use and, in this case, to register my ownership of the domain names.
I subsequently thought better of the idea of selling domain names which obviously now have connotations that are inconsistent with my moral beliefs.
So instead of selling them, I left them dormant to let them expire. In retrospect, it was a dumb idea and I never told my brother or anyone else at Columbus Nova that I had done this.
To conclude that I support white supremacy or antisemitism is unreasonable given what I’ve described above and also taking into consideration that I am a Jew and the son of a Holocaust survivor.
I truly regret the unexpected outcome of my actions.”
[Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images]
