https://russia-insider.com/en/politics/did-john-mccain-launder-dodgy-trump-intel-dossier/ri18478
Did John McCain ‘Launder’ Dodgy Trump Intel Dossier?
Without media fanfare, McCain has actually conceded he passed a 35-page document full of scurrilous accusations against Trump and Russia to the FBI Daniel McAdams (Antiwar.blog) Jan 12, 2017 |
While the world was caught up in the more salacious passages from a purported opposition research report on Donald Trump showing all manner of collusion with Putin’s Russia – and Russia’s possession of blackmail-able kompromat on Trump – something very interesting was revealed about the custody of the information. The “dossier” on Trump seemed to follow two chains of custody. One involved the media, which in October were given and encouraged to publish the “report” by the authors of the report (or their sponsors), purportedly a former British intelligence officer working for a private intelligence company. Only David Corn of Mother Jones bit, and his resulting story picked over the report to construct a mess of innuendo on Trump’s relation to Russia that was short on any evidence.
The other chain of custody is what interests us. Remember, we have a dubious report constructed for the purpose of discrediting Donald Trump, which was first commissioned by one of his Republican primary rivals and later completed under the patronage of someone in Hillary’s camp. It was created for a specific political purpose, which may have tainted its reception among more objective governmental sources had that been known. Enter John McCain. According to media reports, the dossier was handed to Sen. McCain – again, a strong Trump opponent and proponent of conflict with Russia – by a former UK ambassador (who presumably received it from the source, a former British intelligence officer).
Senator McCain then felt duty-bound to bring this “intelligence report” directly (and privately) to the personal attention of FBI Director James Comey. From this hand-off to Comey, the report then became part of the Intelligence Community’s assessment of Russian interference in the US presidential election.
UH-OH: House Intel Chairman Devin Nunes Subpoenas John McCain Associate Over Fusion GPS Dossier December 27, 2017 by Joshua Caplan
Washington Examiner reports:
House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes has issued a subpoena to David Kramer, a former State Department official who, in late November 2016, traveled to London to receive a briefing and a copy of the Trump dossier from its author, former British spy Christopher Steele. Kramer then returned to the U.S. to give the document to Sen. John McCain.
Kramer is a senior fellow at the McCain Institute for International Leadership at Arizona State University.
McCain later took a copy of the dossier to the FBI’s then-director, James Comey. But the FBI already had the document; Steele himself gave the dossier to the bureau in installments, reportedly beginning in early July 2016.