Story highlights Donald Trump questioned whether the Democratic National Committee's research on him was really hacked

The party's 200 pages of research on Trump were sent to Gawker on Wednesday

Washington (CNN) Donald Trump on Wednesday asserted that the Democratic National Committee hadn't been hacked at all -- and in fact conjured the story itself -- after the party's research on Trump was purportedly sent to journalists by a hacker.

"This is all information that has been out there for many years. Much of it is false and/or entirely inaccurate," Trump said in a statement. "We believe it was the DNC that did the 'hacking' as a way to distract from the many issues facing their deeply flawed candidate and failed party leader. Too bad the DNC doesn't hack Hillary Clinton's 33,000 missing emails."

The research -- which spans decades of Trump's business deals, his controversial remarks on guns, immigration and women -- is standard during a presidential campaign, when parties compile opposing candidates' history and past comments to use in attack advertisements and rebuttals.

The DNC's 200-page document on Trump, compiled in December, was published by Gawker after it was forwarded by someone going by the name "Guccifer 2.0" -- a reference to a Romanian hacker who circulated information on the Bush family and other government officials in 2013 and is now imprisoned in Romania.

That the DNC was hacked was first revealed Tuesday when the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said it had discovered two hacking collectives affiliated with Russian intelligence had penetrated the party's network.

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