Trump is pushing a conspiracy theory that Clinton's deleted emails are in Ukraine

Donald Trump has said Hillary Clinton’s emails “could be” in Ukraine, following the release of declassified memorandums of the US president speaking with the Ukrainian president about Joe Biden and the origins of the special counsel’s Russia investigation.

Speaking to reporters at the United Nations, one asked him if he thought 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s emails “could be” in Ukraine.

The US president said, “I think they could be. They could very well be. Boy, I like that question!”

His comments come after a memo of a conversation between him and Volodymyr Zelensky was released by the White House and in it, he asked the president to look into CrowdStrike, the company that exposed Russian collusion into Democratic Party computers in 2016.

He added:

I think one of the greatest crimes committed by Hillary Clinton deleting 33,000 emails after Congress sends her a subpoena.

In December 2014 a Clinton aide instructed employees managing the then-secretary of state’s server to delete 33,000 personal emails – four months before Congress issued her a subpoena.

The emails were deleted after the FBI report and the subpoena; the employee told to delete it discovered that he had not done so when he was originally told to remove them.

According to the released documents, the US president wanted the Ukraine to investigate CrowdStrike, and in the memos Trump was reported to have said:

I would like you to do us a favour though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike … I guess you have one of your wealthy people … The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible.

The implication is that CrowdStrike is a Ukrainian company run by a Ukrainian who falsely accused Russia of the cyberattack against the DNC back in 2016.

He has said this before. Trump told the Associated Press in 2017 that “they brought in another company that I hear is Ukrainian-based” in response to the DNC hack.

“Crowdstrike?” the interviewer asked.

“That’s what I heard. I heard it’s owned by a very rich Ukrainian, that’s what I heard,” Trump said.

There is no evidence that supports this conspiracy theory.

People online haven't responded favourably to Trump reigniting the conspiracy theory

More: Gavin Williamson roasted after saying children shouldn't 'bunk off school' for climate protests

More: This is the perfect response to anyone saying Greta Thunberg is too young to be listened to