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Neither did Kramer, he said.
Kramer: Steele thought McCain could give dossier 'a little more oomph'
Kramer's deposition lays out what happened.
McCain directed Kramer to travel to London to meet with Steele. During that one-day trip in his "personal capacity," Steele met Kramer at the airport and identified himself via text message as the man wearing a blue coat, holding a Financial Times newspaper.
Steele drove Kramer to his home and Kramer read the dossier in his living room.
After lunch at a nearby pub, Steele told Kramer “that he thought having Senator McCain weigh in would be hopeful in terms of giving the FBI additional prod to take this seriously,” Kramer said.
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Kramer added later that "… I think he (Steele) felt that … having Sen. McCain provide it to the FBI would give it a little more oomph than it had had up until that point."
It helped that McCain, a six-term senator and chairman of the influential Senate Armed Services Committee, "was better to be the recipient of this rather than a Democrat because if it were a Democrat, I think that the view was that it would have been dismissed as a political attack."
Back in Washington, D.C., Kramer obtained two versions of the dossier by Glenn Simpson, a former journalist and co-founder of Fusion GPS, a research firm. One was a copy with redactions, the other had no redactions. Steele was contracted by Fusion GPS to conduct opposition research on Trump for the Democratic National Committee and a law firm representing the campaign of Trump's then-Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
Kramer said Steele and Simpson knew he would be giving the dossier to McCain.
President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday adamantly denied reports that Russia had obtained compromising information about him, calling news reports "a disgrace." He also acknowledged Moscow was likely behind the hacking of the DNC. (Jan. 11) AP
Kramer: McCain wanted to do 'due diligence' before giving dossier to FBI
During the hand-off in McCain’s office one evening in late November, Kramer recalled telling McCain and aide Chris Brose that he was couldn't verify the information but that the senator should share it with law enforcement.
McCain asked Kramer to share the report with a State Department official and a National Security Council official.
"Senator McCain asked me to meet with both of them to see if this was being taken seriously in The Government," Kramer said. "… This was kind of due diligence before he went to Director Comey."
A top McCain aide later told Kramer the senator shared the dossier with Comey, the then-FBI director.
Brose told him McCain went alone without staff to meet with Comey, Kramer said. Kramer said he kept Steele and Simpson “apprised” of McCain’s contact with the FBI about the dossier.
Then-FBI Director James Comey
Then-FBI Director James Comey (Photo: J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press)
The McCain associate distributed dossier to BuzzFeed, other media
Kramer acknowledged during the deposition that he gave a copy of the memos to reporters at BuzzFeed News, McClatchy news service, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and National Public Radio. Kramer said Steele and Simpson were aware of some of his contacts with media outlets; he said Steele specifically asked him to meet with a BuzzFeed reporter and veteran journalist Carl Bernstein, which he did.
“I, you know, became aware that other journalists either had seen it or had it,” Kramer said in the deposition. “I stressed to every person I met the sensitivity of the document, the need to verify or refute it, and not to publish it. Unless or until that would be done. And if it was refuted, it was obviously no reason to publish it.”
Kramer met with a BuzzFeed reporter on Dec. 29 at the McCain Institute in Washington, D.C. The office was closed for the holidays, he said. They met for no more than an hour.