Until Mr. Trump’s statements, however, even internet speculation did not assert that CrowdStrike was owned by a rich Ukrainian or suggest that a Democratic server was hidden in Ukraine.
“CrowdStrike’s co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch is a Russia-born U.S. citizen, who has spent all of his adult life in the United States, and has no connection to Ukraine,” the company says on its website.
CrowdStrike concluded that two espionage groups connected to Russia were responsible for the D.N.C. breach. The Justice Department and the F.B.I., after conducting their own investigations, confirmed that Russia hacked the emails. There was no single server and there was no indication that the company moved one to Ukraine.
Mr. Trump’s own former Homeland Security secretary, Thomas P. Bossert, called the president’s assertion that Ukraine intervened in the 2016 elections on behalf of the Democrats “not only a conspiracy theory” but “completely debunked.”
Is the whistle-blower aligned politically with Democrats?
Mr. Trump’s allies — and the president himself — have asserted that the whistle-blower is left-leaning and biased, a notion spread by the president’s supporters across social media and right-wing websites.
Little is known about the whistle-blower other than that he is a career C.I.A. analyst. One of the whistle-blower’s lawyers has rejected the claim that his client is partisan. “Our client has never worked for or advised a political candidate, campaign, or party,” the lawyer, Mark Zaid, wrote in a series of tweets. “Our client has come into contact with presidential candidates from both parties in their roles as elected officials — not as candidates.”
The whistle-blower, whose identity remains secret, was once detailed to the National Security Council at the White House. Michael Atkinson, the inspector general for the American intelligence community, found unspecified indications of “an arguable political bias,” suggesting the whistle-blower favored a rival political candidate, according to a Justice Department memo. It’s possible that the whistle-blower did interact with the vice president. Officials from the National Security Council regularly work in the White House for briefings and other meetings.