This is the first what will be the first in a series of articles breaking down the transcript of the phone call released by Trump of his July 25 conversation with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy. This post addresses a little discussed reference to “Crowdstrike” by Trump.
“I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike… I guess you have one of your wealthy people… The server, they say Ukraine has it. There — are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation …I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you said yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance , but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you. do it if that’s possible.” — Donald Trump to Ukrainian President
As I’ll discuss in a subsequent article how this was all part of a quid pro quo where Trump asked Ukraine to help him out after he had been so generous to Ukraine.
So what’s going on here with this whole “Crowdstrike” thing, and what server is he talking about that Ukraine might have? It’s a reference to CrowdStrike, a California based cybersecurity company.
CrowdStrike was one of three companies that performed cybersecurity forensics on the Democratic National Committee’s server and determined the Russians hacked it. This conclusion was later confirmed by U.S. Intelligence Agencies and by The Mueller Report.
Trump is obsessing over Hillary Clinton’s supposedly missing emails again and suggesting that they are are somehow on some server, somewhere in Ukraine. None of that makes any sense. CrowdStrike was just one of three cybersecurity forensic companies that determined the DNC computer was hacked by Russia.
Trump is doing more than just obsessing about Clinton’s emails. As suggested by the later emphasized words in the quote where he bad mouth’s Mueller and his “incompetent performance,” more is going on here. Trump is attempting to, yet again, cast doubt (and asking Ukraine’s help) for the proven conclusion by the American intelligence community that the Russian government was behind these hacks. This is all part of Trump’s longstanding campaign to cast doubt on whether the Russians really meddled in the American election.
Now why would Trump want to do that, and who would benefit from it?
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