It is unclear why the DNC has refused to grant access to the FBI and what information was contained on the server. “Where is the server? I want to know,” he said. “Why was the FBI told to leave the office of the Democratic National Committee? I’ve been wondering that, I’ve been asking that for months and months,” Trump said during the press conference. The fact that the FBI did not conduct its own forensic analysis could undermine this. Underscoring the importance of the DNC server in the investigation now headed by special counsel Robert Mueller is the fact that 12 Russian intelligence officials have been indicted on charges related to unauthorized access to the server.įor the case to be prosecuted in court, it will be crucial for the FBI to provide evidence there was indeed unauthorized access to the server. … We didn’t get direct access,” Comey said in his testimony. “We did not have access to the devices themselves. Instead, the FBI was forced to rely on information it was given by a private company, Crowdstrike, which had been hired by the DNC. The DNC server, despite being key evidence in the FBI’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 elections, was never properly investigated.įormer FBI Director James Comey testified under oath before the Senate intelligence committee in June last year that the DNC had refused to give the FBI access to its server, despite multiple requests. In two cases, key data is known to have been removed from the servers. While they are separate servers operated independently, they have in common that despite being key evidence for FBI investigations, they were inaccessible or only partially accessible to the agency. The three servers are those of the Democratic National Committee, the House Democratic Caucus, and Hillary Clinton-the private email server she used while serving as secretary of state. President Donald Trump, during a joint press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin, questioned what happened to three servers that were key evidence in cases investigated by the FBI.