Among many other things, in his just concluded remarks, White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney slightly shifted the White House explanation. He said one reason for the hold up of weapons aid to Ukraine was about the “corruption related to the DNC server.” This needs to be unpacked.
It is just a shard of information. But it is a reference to the Seth Rich/DNC Server conspiracy theory which holds the following …
Not only did Donald Trump not collude with Russia during the 2016 campaign. Russia didn’t even interfere in the election at all. Both were framed by a conspiracy between Ukraine and the DNC. The server is the DNC server that the Russians hacked. It’s ‘missing’, so the conspiracy theory goes, because a cybersecurity firm called Crowdstrike was part of the conspiracy and they made it look like the Russians had hacked the servers when in fact it was an inside job by a disgruntled DNC employee. And which employee? Seth Rich.
You probably know this whole story, Russian propaganda channels and Wikileaks latched on to the idea that Rich, who all evidence suggests died the victim of a random street crime, was the disgruntled leaker and that he was later murdered by Democrats or people associated with the Clintons as part of the conspiracy.
That is what this is about: Russia and Trump were framed. The real election interference was a conspiracy between the DNC and Ukraine. That was why the White House held up military aid. And if there’s any question that this was an offhand remark by Mulvaney, remember: Trump explicitly invoked the “Crowdstrike server” in his call with Zelensky. That is what this is about.
