In November 2016, according to the filing, McCain sent Kramer, a director at the McCain Institute for International Leadership, to London to meet with Steele.
McCain had learned from Sir Andrew Wood, the former British Ambassador to Russia, that Steele had collected damaging information about Trump, according to the filing. Wood was an informal adviser to Orbis, which was retained by Fusion GPS, the firm behind the dossier. Fox News previously reported on Wood's involvement.
later obtained copies of the dossier from Glenn Simpson, the head of Fusion GPS, the filing states. Kramer then met with Buzzfeed reporter Ken Bensinger on Dec. 29, 2016 at the McCain Institute.
There, "Kramer reviewed with Bensinger what he knew about the dossier and explained that he took the allegations seriously." Then, Kramer showed Bensinger the dossier and purportedly informed him that “some of the information was unverified."
Steele shared a report from the dossier written on Dec. 13 with an unnamed British security official, GOP Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., Senior Director for Russian Affairs at the National Security Council (NSC) Celeste Wallender, and House Speaker Paul Ryan’s chief of staff, John Burks.
However, Fox News reported in August that embattled Justice Department official Bruce Ohr had contact in 2016 with then-colleague Andrew Weissmann, now a top deputy to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, as well as other senior FBI officials about the dossier and the people behind it.
Ohr's network of contacts on the dossier included: anti-Trump former FBI agent Peter Strzok; former FBI lawyer Lisa Page; former deputy director Andrew McCabe; Weissmann and at least one other DOJ official; and a current FBI agent who worked with Strzok on the Russia case.
In a report last week, the Justice Department Inspector General revealed that government-issued phones belonging to Strzok and Page were wiped completely soon after they were terminated from the Mueller probe over anti-Trump bias.
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