Yesterday, Maryland’s Governor Larry Hogan (R) responded to reports from the FBI that a Russian group owns a Maryland datacenter that controls the Maryland Board of Elections data: “It is with concern that I learned that information provided to the Maryland State Board of Elections by federal law enforcement this week indicates that a vendor contracted by the Board to provide a number of services, including voter registration infrastructure, had been acquired by a parent company with financial ties to a Russian national.”

News reports suggest that this datacenter was acquired by Russians in 2015 when Altpoint Capital Partners bought ByteGrid LLC. The news reports suggest that this is a recent purchase, that it happened under Governor Hogan, and that Republicans are to blame. All of these suggestions are wrong.

The partnership between ByteGrid and Altpoint can be traced to 2011, when Altpoint began to fund a massive expansion of ByteGrid’s holdings. Altpoint was known to have major Russian investors at this time. It was through this partnership that ByteGrid was able to purchase a data center in Silver Spring.

In 2013, ByteGrid wins a contract from the Obama Administration to be the data center for the Department of Labor. At this time, Lockheed Martin was already using the data center, and they were influential in getting ByteGrid government contracts.

In 2014, ByteGrid began to expand into the West Coast, purchasing NetRiver. At the same time, it expanded its Maryland holding with support from Montgomery County’s energy rebate fund for data centers.

In 2015, ByteGrid purchased Sidus, a Maryland firm that stored health related data. Jason Silva, who ran Sidus, became the CTO of ByteGrid. The purchase also gave access to Sidus’s involvement with the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program.

In 2017, Silva was appointed to run the newly formed Tech Council of Maryland. The council was formed in partnership with the tech community of Montgomery County and DC suburbs.

What we can learn from this timeline is that the Russian connection to ByteGrid was well-established by the time the Obama Administration approved the company to store sensitive Department of Labor data. All of the information regarding the funding was perfectly visible and easy to find, being mentioned in multiple business journals. At no time was any of the data reported as mishandled, which was verified by the Federal Bureau of Investigations’s notification to Maryland officials.

News organizations are not reporting on the timeline. Instead, they are making veiled suggestions to divert attention to the Obama Administration relationship with ByteGrid and to instead suggest that nefarious activities were caused by Republican ignorance or active participation.