Watch a GOP congressman learn Ukrainians don't own CrowdStrike live on CNN

Rep. Randy Weber and Chris Cuomo wrangle

(Image credit: Screenshot/CNN via The Daily Beast)

last updated 4 December 2019

Despite what you may have heard from President Trump, CrowdStrike is a publicly traded California company founded in 2011, it never took possession of the Democratic National Committee's hacked server — which is on display in Washington (next to the Watergate filing cabinet), not in Ukraine — and its cofounder Dmitri Alperovitch is a Russian-born U.S. citizen, not a "wealthy Ukrainian," as Trump told Fox & Friends last month and Ukraine's president in July. CrowdStrike's clients include the National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC), the House GOP's campaign arm.

This is all worth keeping in mind as you watch Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas) wrangle with CNN's Chris Cuomo on Monday night.

Cuomo got Weber to acknowledge that Russia — not Ukraine — hacked the DNC server in 2016. "Nobody has ever suggested as a matter of fact that Ukraine had anything to do with that," Cuomo said. "The only person who has suggested it, in the ugliest of ironies, is Vladimir Putin. He made up a story about Ukraine wanting to go after Trump, and now members of your own party are parroting it." Weber tried to counter with a series of questions, starting with whether CrowdStrike investigated the hack for the Democrats. "Yes," Cuomo said.

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"Is CrowdStrike in part owned by a Ukrainian?" Weber asked. "No," Cuomo replied. "Really?" Weber said. "That's not the information that we have." "You have bad information," Cuomo said, adding that Trump's former homeland security advisers Tom Bossert called the Ukraine conspiracy theory a joke and U.S. intelligence, the GOP-led Senate Intelligence Committee, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller all corroborated CrowdStrike's conclusion that Russia hacked the DNC's servers.

If you want more information on CrowdStrike, The Washington Post's fact-checkers dove in to Trump's "debunked conspiracy theory" and decided "there aren't enough Pinocchios available in our system to truly do this justice." Cuomo's closing argument dripped with disappointment in the Republicans sacrificing reality to help Trump (and Putin). Watch below. Peter Weber

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.