🔴#PressRelease #Leonardo and @CrowdStrike collaborate to strengthen organizations’ #security posture https://t.co/K1bOWk8xs9 pic.twitter.com/GaZfz1vZDs
— Leonardo Cyber & Security (@LDO_CyberSec) July 29, 2020
Leonardo is a billion-dollar Italian defense contractor. Whistleblowers have recently come forward with evidence the company played a role in the manipulation of votes in the Nov. 3 U.S. presidential election, skewing the results toward Joe Biden.
CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity firm perhaps most famous for being the company hired by the Democratic National Committee in 2016 to determine the source of hacks of its computers during that year’s presidential campaign. CrowdStrike would conclude the source of those hacks were individuals associated with Russian intelligence services and those findings would play a large role in subsequent investigations that would engulf the Trump presidency.
Last July Leonardo and CrowdStrike penned a broad agreement that would bring CrowdStrike cyber security software to Leonardo customers. It is just one of many direct and indirect connections between the companies and other individuals and entities that figure in two of the biggest scandals of the Trump presidency: SpyGate and ItalyGate.
Andrew Bagley, a former FBI adviser, was a visiting researcher at Link University in Rome in May and June, 2010. Link is the entity Joseph Mifsud was associated with when, in 2016, Mifsud told then-Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos the Russian government had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails.
That statement would become the genesis of the Russia investigation.
Since 2015, Bagley has been privacy counsel at CrowdStrike.
In 2012 CrowdStrike co-founder and former CTO Dmitri Alperovitch took part in a cyber attack war game put on by The Washington Post in Washington D.C. Also on the panel was William Lynn III. Today Lynn heads Leonardo DRS, Leonardo’s USA subsidiary.
In November 2009, just days after winning the election, then President-Elect Obama pledged to bar individuals from his administration who had worked as lobbyists at any point in the previous two years.
Obama chose to grant a waiver to Lynn just three days after being inaugurated.
Italian authorities have announced this week they are investigating Leonardo managers for allegedly accepting bribes in exchange for sales contracts to suppliers. Those activities were allegedly facilitated by tech giant Google, which hid the true sources of the funds being transferred.
A request for comment from CrowdStrike on the extent of its relationship with Leonardo SpA was not returned as of the time of this writing.