Bizarre conspiracy theory buried in Donald Trump’s phone call

All the attention on Donald Trump’s troubling phone call has distracted from his weird obsession with an outlandish conspiracy theory.

Donald Trump is currently in a heap of trouble for asking the President of Ukraine to investigate one of his political rivals, Joe Biden.

The request came during a phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky, the transcript of which was released yesterday.

But all the attention on that politically explosive aspect of the call has distracted from another, equally extraordinary exchange.

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Before mentioning Mr Biden, Mr Trump asked Mr Zelensky to look into a bizarre conspiracy theory he has been spreading for years.

The exchange started when Mr Zelensky said Ukraine wanted to buy more Javelin missiles from the United States.

The Javelin is an antitank weapon, and a crucial ingredient in evening out the power imbalance between the Ukrainian and Russian militaries.

“I would also like to thank you for your great support in the area of defence. We are ready to continue to co-operate for the next steps. Specifically, we are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defence purposes,” the Ukrainian President said.

In response, Mr Trump said he wanted Ukraine to do the United States a “favour”.

“I would like you to do us a favour though, because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it,” said Mr Trump.

“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.

“There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney-General (William Barr) call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it.
“As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible.”

You might be wondering what the heck Mr Trump was talking about. Allow me to explain.

President Donald Trump. Picture: AP/Susan Walsh

CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity firm that investigated the hack of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in 2016.

America’s intelligence agencies eventually concluded Russia was behind that hack. Mr Trump has repeatedly cast doubt on their conclusion.

Over the past couple of years, he has pushed a conspiracy theory that during its investigation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation failed to seize a DNC server containing important information about the hack.

There is no such server. It is a figment of the President’s imagination.

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

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

Mr Trump is also under the mistaken impression that CrowdStrike is a Ukrainian company — he once claimed it was owned by “a very rich Ukrainian” — when it is actually an American company based in Sunnyvale, California.

“It almost sounds like he was babbling to the President of Ukraine,” Robert Johnston, who led CrowdStrike’s DNC investigation, told The Daily Beast today.

“I imagine it would have confused the Ukrainian President. Like, ‘What are you talking about?’”

So, where did Mr Trump get this idea that a DNC server was missing, and that it somehow ended up in Ukraine?

The theory is popular in some of the darker corners of the internet. It is used to suggest that CrowdStrike — sometimes in collaboration with the FBI, depending on the theorist — framed Russia for the DNC hack.

The President has actually been running with it for a while.

“Why wouldn’t (John) Podesta and Hillary Clinton allow the FBI to see the server?” Mr Trump asked back in 2017.

“They brought in another company that I hear is Ukrainian-based. I heard it’s owned by a very rich Ukrainian. That’s what I heard.”

CrowdStrike is not, in fact, owned by a Ukrainian. The internet posts often claim co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch is from Ukraine, when he is actually an American citizen who was born in Russia.

The idea that CrowdStrike denied the FBI access to evidence is also false.

“With regards to our investigation of the DNC hack in 2016, we provided all forensic evidence and analysis to the FBI,” the company said in a statement today.

“As we’ve stated before, we stand by our findings and conclusions that have been fully supported by the US intelligence community.”

So to summarise, during the phone call, Mr Trump asked Mr Zelensky to launch an official investigation into a mad conspiracy theory.

Fabulous.

He has form in this area.

After Jeffrey Epstein’s death in August, Mr Trump promoted the insane conspiracy theory that Bill and Hillary Clinton were somehow involved.

RELATED: Trump spreads Epstein conspiracy theory

During Barack Obama’s presidency, he was a leading proponent of the theory that Mr Obama was not an American citizen. He claimed to have hired private investigators to look into the matter, and at one point said they “could not believe what they’re finding”.

Mr Obama eventually released his long-form birth certificate to put the theory to bed. Mr Trump reacted by questioning its authenticity.

When he was competing for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, Mr Trump suggested the father of one of his opponents, Ted Cruz, had been involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

The Cruz campaign denounced the claim as “garbage”.

During the general election campaign, Mr Trump fomented false rumours the Democratic nominee, Ms Clinton, was suffering from a debilitating illness.

And he rehashed an old conspiracy theory about the death of former Clinton aide Vince Foster, who took his own life in 1993, saying it was “very fishy”.

What I’m saying is that Mr Trump is really, really partial to a conspiracy theory, which is maybe a little worrying, given he occupies the most powerful office on the planet.