Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike called out in Trump-Ukraine call transcript
CrowdStrike investigated the Democratic National Committee's hack in 2016. President Trump asked Ukraine's president to look into the company.
On a call with Ukraine's president, Donald Trump asked for an investigation on CrowdStrike. The cybersecurity firm concluded that Russians hacked the DNC in 2016.
President Donald Trump asked the leader of Ukraine to investigate CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm that investigated the 2016 hack of the Democratic National Committee, during a recent phone call, according to a memo released by the White House on Wednesday.
Trump asked Volodymyr Zelensky, the newly elected president of Ukraine, to look into the Sunnyvale, California-based company and referenced a server. It's unclear what server Trump was referring to.
"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," Trump said, according to the transcript summary. "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."
CrowdStrike investigated the Democratic National Committee's breach in 2016, and concluded that Russian hackers were behind the cyberattacks. Though the Mueller report and the intelligence community support the company's findings, Trump has questioned where the DNC's hacked servers are.
The release of the transcript summary follows a move in Congress to open a formal impeachment inquiry of the president amid reports he asked Zelensky to investigate potential presidential contender Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. Democratic lawmakers have argued that such a request would constitute an abuse of presidential power.
Trump expressed a belief that CrowdStrike is a company based in Ukraine and owned by "a very rich Ukrainian," according to a 2017 interview with the Associated Press. The cybersecurity company's co-founder and CTO, Dmitri Alperovitch, is a US citizen and was born in Russia.
CrowdStrike reiterated that it had provided all the evidence it had gathered in its investigation of the DNC hack to law enforcement.
"With regards to our investigation of the DNC hack in 2016, we provided all forensic evidence and analysis to the FBI. As we've stated before, we stand by our findings and conclusions that have been fully supported by the US Intelligence community," CrowdStrike said in a statement.