INTERVIEW OF: DAVID J. KRAMER
Tuesday, December 19, 2017
This is an interview focused on the Steele dossier, Steele passing it to David Kramer, who in turn gave it to NoName, who passed it to Corney. I was looking at testimony for events occurring between 11/22/2016 and 1/18/2017 per Q post #4155.
Steele explained to Kramer that his work initially started as a Republican-sponsored initiative for research on Donald Trump. lt then changed into a Democratic-supported, funded initiative, and he did not tell Kramer who those individuals were.
The reports were produced between June 2016 up until December 2016.
Steele told Kramer he had been in touch with an FBI contact whom he knew from before, and he had contacted that individual in July 2016.
"And his explanation was that the contact with the FBl, I think, continued from July up until, I would say, roughly September, October of that year, 2016, but then it sort of came to a stop. And so his concern was that the FBI was not taking the same approach that it had when he initially broached this with them."
Kramer received a copy of the Steele report and took it to a meeting with John McCain on November 30, 2016.
McCain asked Kramer what he thought he should do. Kramer suggested bringing a copy of it to the Director of the FBI and the Director of the ClA.
McCain meet with Director Comey on December 9 and gave him a copy of the report.
Mr. Steele was interested in whether the senator had met with Mr. Comey.
Steele and Kramer were in touch fairly regularly by phone. Steele was trying to get a sense of what was happening with the report.
Kramer was concerned about Steele's safety after the Wall Street Journal named him.
They then went on to discuss BuzzFeed:
"Since the publication of the Steele dossier in BuzzFeed – by the way, do you know who gave the copy of the dossier to BuzzFeed?"
"I met with Ken Bensinger of BuzzFeed at Mr. Steele's request. He contacted me around Christmas of December 2016, explained that he had worked with BuzzFeed in the past when Orbis, Mr. Steele's firm, had done work on the FIFA
investigation, found them to be a reputable outlet to work with, and said that Mr. Bensinger had contacted Mr. Steele or tried to reach Mr. Steele and asked - Mr. Steele asked me, can I give Ken Bensinger your contact information?"
Bensinger went to Kramer's office. "McCain lnstitute was closed that week, but I was there. Came to my office. He had asked me before if he could see the document, and I did show him the document. He asked if he could take photos or images of it with his iPhone, and I asked him not to do that. I said – this may reflect my own lack of technological savvy - but I said, I worry that things on an iPhone can go places where you don't necessarily anticipate, either intentionally or not."
Kramer left Bensinger in his office for 30 minutes to read the report. Of course, Bensinger took photos of the doc.
The Kramer-Bensinger meeting happened on December 29 and the BuzzFeed publication went out on January 10th 2017.
Q: Do you know if – or do you know anything about Steele's sources or subsources?
Mr. Kramer has been responsive information to that question, but for a variety of reasons that I would hope I don't need to elaborate, he is not going to provide source – the names of sources. … The basis is that providing that information, in our view, creates danger for the witness.
I think it would put any sources I would name in danger as well.
There have been people suspected, whether they are or not, one of whom was found dead in the back of a car in late December 2016.
Several others have been arrested.
MR. SCHIFF: Are you able to tell us whether any of these sources, to your knowledge, are in the United States, or
are they all in Russia or outside the country?"
MR. KRAMER: At the moment I'm not aware of any that are in the United States.
MR. SCHIFF: You described the dossier as raw intelligence, which that's how it comes across. Did you and Mr. Steele discuss whether he was sharing this raw intelligence with MI5, with his old offlce?
MR. KRAMER: He had indicated that he had been in touch with his former colleagues.
The report goes on to discuss the contents of the dossier. The main highlights are the Republican-Democrat-NoName origins, the early FBI involvement with Steele, Steele's orchestration of the BuzzFeed meeting, and Kramer not wanting to answer questions regarding sources for fear that people would be killed.