Here's everything you need to know about the "Crowdstrike" conspiracy Trump mentioned on his call with Ukraine: politifact.com/truth-o-meter/…
Crowdstrike is an American cybersecurity firm that aims to safeguard its clients from cyberattacks. In May 2016, the Democratic National Committee hired Crowdstrike after it began to suspect that its servers had been breached.
The firm found that two groups of Russian hackers had infiltrated DNC servers for about a year, giving them access to emails and opposition research about Trump. Crowdstrike then kicked the hackers off the servers.
Then, a Romanian hacker named Guccifer 2.0 claimed credit for the cyberattack and leaked DNC emails to the American press. WikiLeaks also claimed it had emails from Clinton, with Guccifer being its source.
The cyberattack and related leaks added to the nationwide firestorm over Clinton’s use of email.
Clinton had previously drawn criticism for conducting State Department business on a private email server as secretary of state, and about 33,000 emails were deleted.
Clinton had previously drawn criticism for conducting State Department business on a private email server as secretary of state, and about 33,000 emails were deleted.
That controversy served as the fuel for Trump’s belief that, despite Crowdstrike and the FBI’s investigation of the DNC hack, Clinton’s campaign was hiding something. (We should note that Clinton’s email server and the DNC servers were two entirely different sets of computers.)
After a reporter asked him if he believes that "the emails from Hillary Clinton" are in Ukraine, Donald Trump said, "I think they could be." (on Sept. 25, 2019)
But we found no evidence that Crowdstrike ever worked on issues around Clinton’s private email server. (Again, Crowdstrike was involved in the DNC hacking case, which is altogether different from the Clinton emails.)
In one way or another, this falsehood has been pushed by Trump and his allies for the past few years. The July call is one of many references Trump has made to Crowdstrike.
Setting aside the fact that there is no missing server, the conspiracy has roots in some fringe beliefs that Ukraine coordinated the DNC hack to frame the Russians.
The conspiracy grew on Reddit and 4chan, and has slowly trickled into the mainstream over the past few years. It’s been amplified by conservative and Russian media outlets, social media and even the criminal trial of Roger Stone, a former Trump adviser.
