by Chris Menahan, Information Liberation:

President Trump responded to Robert Mueller’s second indictment of unindictable Russians by questioning what happened with the DNC’s server and asking why the FBI never took possession of it.

He followed up by asking why the Obama Administration did nothing to stop these supposed hacks which happened on his watch:

….Where is the DNC Server, and why didn’t the FBI take possession of it? Deep State?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 14 July 2018

The stories you heard about the 12 Russians yesterday took place during the Obama Administration, not the Trump Administration. Why didn’t they do something about it, especially when it was reported that President Obama was informed by the FBI in September, before the Election?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 14 July 2018

The FBI never took possession of the DNC’s supposedly “hacked” server. Former FBI director James Comey said they took the DNC-hired and thoroughly discredited firm CrowdStrike — which he called “highly respected” — at their word that the data they gave them was genuine, even though CrowdStrike has been caught misrepresenting data in the past.

As The Daily Caller reported on the oddities of the story last year:

The DNC claimed in January that the reason the FBI never examined their hacked server was simple–the FBI never requested to do so. Yet, DNC deputy communications director Eric Walker gave told BuzzFeed News in an email, “The DNC had several meetings with representatives of the FBI’s Cyber Division and its Washington (DC) Field Office, the Department of Justice’s National Security Division, and U.S. Attorney’s Offices, and it responded to a variety of requests for cooperation, but the FBI never requested access to the DNC’s computer servers.”

However, this claim was contradicted by then-FBI director James Comey, who said in a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in January that there were “multiple requests at different levels” to look at the DNC’s servers. Instead, Comey said a “highly respected private company” got access to the servers–meaning CrowdStrike.

A senior FBI official told WIRED in January, “The FBI repeatedly stressed to DNC officials the necessity of obtaining direct access to servers and data, only to be rebuffed until well after the initial compromise had been mitigated.”

“This left the FBI no choice but to rely upon a third party for information. These actions caused significant delays and inhibited the FBI from addressing the intrusion earlier.”

As Josephine Wolff of Slate pointed out, “…whether because they were denied access or simply never asked for it, the FBI instead used the analysis of the DNC breach conducted by security firm CrowdStrike as the basis for its investigation. Regardless of who is telling the truth about what really happened, perhaps the most astonishing thing about this probe is that a private firm’s investigation and attribution was deemed sufficient by both the DNC and the FBI.”

CrowdStrike’s credibility was further called into question by yesterday’s Mueller indictment.

As The Daily Caller’s Andrew Kerr reports:

CrowdStrike Bragged About Purging Russians From The DNC’s Networks. Now We Know They Were Wrong

Russian hackers retained access to the Democratic National Committee’s network until October 2016, despite private security firm CrowdStrike’s claim that it had expelled all intruders months earlier, according to an indictment filed Friday against 12 Russian intelligence operatives.

The indictment, filed by the office of Special Council Robert Mueller, reveals that CrowdStrike was unsuccessful in expelling intruders from the DNC’s networks in June and that a malicious program “remained on the DNC network until in or around October 2016.”

The hackers also gained access to DNC computers hosted on a third-party cloud-computing service around September 2016, which enabled them to steal data from the DNC by creating backups, or snapshots, of the DNC’s cloud-based systems.

The revelation contradicts claims made by CrowdStrike, DNC officials and Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz that all intruders had been kicked out of the DNC by June 2016.

CrowdStrike said it “immediately identified” and took action against the Russian intruders in a June 2016 blog post touting its work in securing the DNC’s servers.

DNC officials and security experts told The Washington Post in June 2016 that all hackers were expelled from the DNC’s network in a “major computer cleanup campaign” earlier that month.

“When we discovered the intrusion, we treated this like the serious incident it is and reached out to CrowdStrike immediately. Our team moved as quickly as possible to kick out the intruders and secure our network,” Wasserman Schultz told The Post.

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