By Joseph Marks

President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shake hands during a meeting in New York.
President Trump's apparent embrace of bizarre conspiracy theories involving the
In his July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump seems to be making reference to strands of conspiracy theories widely spread on right-wing media and conspiracy sites that posit CrowdStrike, which investigated the Democratic National Committee breach, was actually colluding with the DNC to fake the breach — and that a server with evidence of this crime is currently in Ukraine.
Trump muddied the waters even more during a news conference with Zelensky yesterday by saying that 30,000 deleted emails from his 2016 rival Hillary Clinton’s personal server — which was entirely separate from the DNC servers — “could very well” be in Ukraine as well.
While it is Trump’s efforts on that call to enlist a foreign government to dig up dirt on his political rival Joe Biden that have Democratic lawmakers launching impeachment proceedings, the fact that Trump is still suggesting there's some sort of frame job in election interference has officials and
“The fact that the president of the United States, contrary to all evidence from his own government and allied governments, is talking about this now is absurd,” Peter Singer, a
That refusal isn’t just a presidential affront to the U.S.
DNC spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa called it “surreal” on Twitter that Trump hadn’t accepted Russia’s role in the DNC breach in a fairly recent private call with a foreign leader.
This is complete nonsense. Trump still hasn't accepted that Russia interfered in our election, and instead, is using a call with a foreign leader to push conspiracy theories. This is surreal. https://t.co/bWwYwXzGhq— Xochitl Hinojosa (@XochitlHinojosa) September 25, 2019
Incredible. After Zelensky says Ukraine would like to buy more anti-tank missiles, Trump says: "I would like you to do us a favor though..." & then talks about how he wants access to a Crowdstrike server. Why? To undermine charges of Russia's DNC hacking? https://t.co/2dfu4gUguy— Michael Carpenter (@mikercarpenter) September 25, 2019
“My media monitoring tool has been blowing up!” the Crowdstrike spokesperson said in an email. https://t.co/TT7403M5t3— Thomas Rid (@RidT) September 25, 2019
But it's clear he was serious about Ukraine's investigation: “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,” he told Zelensky.
As my colleagues Craig Timberg, Drew Harwell and Ellen Nakashima reported in an exhaustive accounting of the theory’s many strands, the president is winking at several ideas that are highly implausible or provably false.
The conspiracy theories involving CrowdStrike stem from Breitbart News stories, Reddit threads and from the criminal trial of his friend Roger Stone and show “the shape-shifting nature of misinformation as it moves across media, mixing
Trump's reference to “one of your wealthy people” seems to nod at Dmitri Alperovitch, a
And “while it’s true that the FBI did not take custody of the affected servers [from the 2016 hack,] people familiar with FBI hack investigations say the agency often relies on forensic analysis by outside firms, including CrowdStrike, which is among the nation’s most prominent, having handled North Korea’s hack of Sony Pictures in 2014, among others,” my colleagues reported.
“The FBI felt it was not necessary to enter the DNC's premises and take custody of the affected servers, as agents were able to obtain complete copies of forensic images made by CrowdStrike, according to people familiar with the investigation.”
Here's Johns Hopkins University
1) Who claimed that "Ukraine has the server"?— Thomas Rid (@RidT) September 25, 2019( The claim is wrong and makes no sense.)
btw , evergreen https://t.co/sUNOKIUTQU
Here’s Andrew van der Stock, a consultant with the security firm Synopsys and Wayne Anderson, a security architect at the anti-virus firm McAfee:
In— Wayne Anderson (@DigitalSecArch) September 25, 2019biz , I compete with @CrowdStrike all the time, but I have to say personally, speaking for myself, this is not OK. This is not appropriate, and smacks of totalitarianism, exactly the stuff our forefathers and our veterans fought and died to keep us safe from.
Here’s Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N
Seeing some political conflation about two sections of the report:— Mark Meadows (@RepMarkMeadows) September 25, 2019
The "favor" section of the call is referencing "crowdstrike ," or an investigation into election interference. This is NOT the same thing as the Biden section.
Conflating the two is misleading and irresponsible
Fair point. Clearly the transcript shows— Josh Holmes (@HolmesJosh) September 25, 2019crowdstrike is the first order of business and what he’d like them to cooperate with the DOJ to discuss further. Every article reads like the call was intended to ask them to investigate Biden and that’s just not the case.

Joseph Maguire.
PINGED:
The nation's highest-ranking intelligence official threatened to resign
over concerns that the White House would try to force him to withhold
information from Congress about a whistleblower complaint against the
president, my colleagues Greg Miller, Shane Harris and Karoun Demirjian report.
Acting
director of national intelligence Joseph Maguire made the threat to
force President Trump to decide whether he was going to assert executive
privilege over the complaint, which centers on the late-July call
between Trump and the leader of Ukraine, sources told The Post.
Democratic lawmakers have criticized Maguire, who took over the top
intelligence post last month, for stonewalling their attempts to obtain
the complaint.
Whether Trump decides to exert executive privilege before today's hearing remains to be seen.
Maguire
denied the reports. “At no time have I considered resigning my position
since assuming this role,” he said in a statement. “I have never quit
anything in my life, and I am not going to start now. I am committed to
leading the Intelligence Community to address the diverse and complex
threats facing our nation.”

Dominion Energy in Virginia.
The GAO

A man types on a computer.
PWNED:
Security researchers found the personal data of nearly the entire
population of Ecuador exposed online for the second time in little over a
week, William Turton, Stephan Kueffner and Nour Al Ali at Bloomberg News report.
This week researchers discovered an unsecured server in Germany
containing the names, addresses, workplace, family members, phone
numbers, vehicle information and emails of nearly 20 million Ecuadoran
citizens.
While the data sets from the two compromises
appear to be similar, there's no clear connection between them. The
first data set belonged to the Ecuadoran company Novaestrat and was
hosted in Miami; the new data was traced to a server owned by another
Ecuadoran company, DataBook. By Wednesday morning, the website hosting
the newly discovered data had been taken offline, Bloomberg reports.
Government
officials have asked prosecutors to investigate the potential data
breach, Bloomberg reports. The country's Ministry of Telecommunications
and Information Society is still investigating the earlier breach.
PUBLIC KEY
— Cybersecurity news from the public sector:
After
months of pressure, Mitch McConnell agreed to spend $250 million for
voting security in the 2020 elections. But experts estimate that
adequate protection will require billions.
The New York Times
The New York Times
Major
automakers are moving full steam ahead with their plans to put
self-driving cars on the road, even as lawmakers and regulators in
Washington fall behind on creating a cybersecurity framework for those
vehicles.
The Hill
The Hill
The
Senate on Tuesday passed legislation intended to boost the federal
government’s ability to respond to and assist agencies and private
sector companies in the event of debilitating cyber incidents.
The Hill
The Hill
— Cybersecurity news from the private sector:
The
life of a trucker was once a solitary one, with an open road and little
more than a radio to connect to the wider world. Now, vehicles are
packed with technology, opening the door to hackers, experts warn.
Wall Street Journal
Wall Street Journal
A
new report claims mobile networks cannot afford to keep Huawei in its
networks for security reasons, and the cost of replacement is almost
95% less than previously thought.
Forbes
Forbes
Editors
in Los Angeles reported being unable to reboot their computers on
Monday evening, an issue that software maker Avid says it's looking
into.
Vice
Vice
— Cybersecurity news from abroad:
Governments
are using “cyber troops” to discredit political opponents, bury
opposing views and interfere in foreign affairs, according to Oxford
researchers.
New York Times
New York Times
— Today:
- Auburn
University's Embassy of Estonia in partnership with the Embassy of
Estonia and Center for Internet Security will host a forum on securing
elections Thursday at 9:30 a.m.
in Washington.
- The House Energy and Commerce Committee will host a hearing to discuss securing America's wireless future and the deployment of 5G communications on Friday at 9:30 am.
- The House Science Committee will host a hearing on "Online Imposters and Disinformation" Thursday at 2 p.m.
- The House Judiciary Committee will host a hearing on securing America's elections at 9 a.m.
on Friday.
Federal Trade Commission Chairman Joe Simons discusses SIM-swapping:
— Tom Graves (@RepTomGraves) September 25, 2019
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