In his now famous call Trump notoriously asked the President of Ukraine to find the Crowdstrike server in his country. The absurd conspiracy theory associated with this was slammed by Fiona Hill in her testimony to Congress as a politically driven falsehood aimed at advancing Russian interests.
Trump responded by advancing Russian interests by doubling down on this falsehood. Appearing on Fox News Trump stated that the DNC would not give its server to the FBI, that the DNC refused to, and that the DNC instead gave the server to Crowdstrike, which Trump asserted is owned by a wealthy Ukrainian.
“They gave the [DNC] server to Crowdstrike…a company owned by a very wealthy Ukrainian. And I still want to see that server, that’s a big part of this whole thing. Why did they give it to a Ukrainian company?”
At that point even the Fox & Friends host was incredulous saying, “are you sure they did that, are you sure they gave it to Ukraine?”
Trump responded, “well that’s what the word is. That’s what I asked in my phone call, as you know.”
You can see this bizarre interview here.
Literally everything Trump said is a lie. So let’s go with the facts.
- Crowdstrike is not Ukrainian company. It is an American company headquartered in Sunnyvale California.
- Crowdstrike is not owned by a wealthy Ukrainian. It is a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ. You too can become an owner of Crowdstrike by purchasing the stock under “CRWD.”
- One of Crowdstrike’s two founders, Dmitri Alperovitch, was born in Russia (Moscow) but immigrated here and is an American citizen. He also serves as the company’s Chief Technology Officer.
- Crowdstrike’s other founder is George Kurtz. He was born and raised in New Jersey. He is the company’s Chief Executive Officer.
- Crowdstrike is a reputable cyber-security company. With the agreement of the FBI it was one of three companies contracted by the DNC to investigate the DNC server breach. All three companies concluded the hack was done by Russians. Crowdstrike “imaged” the DNC server (in essence a complete data download) and gave all that data to the FBI. For all practical purposes, the DNC did “give” its server to the FBI, through Crowdstrike. That is Crowdstrike’s only role in the DNC server issue.
- The only entities, other than Trump, claiming the DNC server is in Ukraine are the Russian Intelligence Services. The whole thing is a Russian propaganda disinformation campaign and a rather stupid one at that because there is no way the DNC server would be Ukraine. The idiocy of the whole thing has not prevented the President from pushing it, even as a matter of policy to a foreign head of state.
