Trump in his own words
his Helsinki comments — July 17, 2018 — www.axios.com
- "You have groups that are wondering why the FBI never took the server. Why haven’t they taken the server? Why was the FBI told to leave the office of the Democratic National Committee? I’ve been wondering that. I’ve been asking that for months and months, and I’ve been tweeting it out and calling it out on social media. Where is the server? I want to know, where is the server? And what is the server saying?"
- "With that being said, all I can do is ask the question. My people came to me — Dan Coats came to me and some others — they said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin; he just said it’s not Russia."
- "I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be, but I really do want to see the server."
Trump in his own words
his conditions for the new President of Ukraine — July 25, 2019 — www.vox.com
“I would like you to do us a favor though.” [...]
“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,” Trump said, according to the White House.
Trump in his own words
Multiple former officials told the Washington Post — Dec 19, 2019 — www.cnn.com
President Donald Trump once stated explicitly that he believes that it was Ukraine -- not Russia -- that meddled in the 2016 election because Russian President Vladimir Putin "told me," The Washington Post reported Thursday, citing a former senior White House official.
[…]
The officials told the paper that Trump became more insistent about the conspiracy after his private meeting with Putin in July 2017 at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany.
“They say” CrowdStrike did it, in Putin’s own words
Sept 26, 2019 — www.buzzfeednews.com
[...]
In the memorandum, Trump says to Zelensky, “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.”
One large 4chan thread was titled “HAPPENING: CROWDSTRIKE SERVER RELEASE IMMINENT,” another, “What is CrowdStrike, and why does their server seem to be important?” and another, “ULTIMATE HAPPENING: Trump mentions CROWDSTRIKE in Transcript release, Tied to DNC server & Seth Rich.”
CrowdStrike's role in a sprawling conspiracy carried out by the DNC started as wild conjecture on anonymous message boards in the lead up to the 2016 election. The flames were fanned by Russian news outlets like Russia Today and Sputnik News, who both published multiple pieces about it. It was then laundered into mainstream Republican discourse by figures like Roger Stone, Trump's former campaign adviser.
[...]
In the FBI’s own words:
CrowdStrike never “had the Server” — They only had an Image of the Server.
Dec 3, 2019 — www.csoonline.com
The FBI properly collected forensic evidence
Trump’s mention of the FBI’s failure to take the presumably single server was considered then and now a misleading accusation given that the DNC decommissioned more than 140 servers after the Russian hack, as Special Counsel Robert Mueller documented in his Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election. Moreover, the FBI took images of those servers, engaged in memory dumps of connected devices and collected network logs, gathering enough forensic evidence to conduct their analysis.
Most experts argue that the FBI’s forensic methods produced superior evidence than would be obtained from unplugging the machine and hauling it away, which would have caused important evidence resident in memory to disappear. Finally, a physical DNC server hacked by the Russians now sits in the DNC basement next to the filing cabinet broken into by the Watergate burglars.
“CrowdStrike got a forensic image, which was provided to the FBI,” according to a Department of Defense cyber threat analyst who spoke with CSO. “Nobody needs the physical hardware anymore.”
Ukraine never had the Server either, that Putin told Trump to look for.
The DNC still has the Server.
Perhaps Trump should ask them, if he can have a copy of it too,
— after he gives them a copy of the contents of his own Secret Server, where they hide stuff like Extortion Calls to Ukraine.
He can call it “doing them a favor though” — if that would make the Server exchange, any easier.
...
Assuming he really wants to know, as he told the world at his Helsinki Surrender Summit:
Where is the server? I want to know, where is the server? And what is the server saying?"
Assuming it wasn’t all one big ruse, to keep his “handler” happy … as was this stark admission:
Dan Coats came to me and some others — they said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin; he just said it’s not Russia."
"I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be, but I really do want to see the server."
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