“A new book out by Guardian journalist Luke Harding, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win, provides some new details about how the dossier got into FBI Hands. One of the takeaways is the John McCain had the dossier before BuzzFeed published it. Sending his emissary to the U.K. covertly to collect might have been a ruse.
The book also reveals that the media colluded to spread the anti-Trump research conducted by Fusion GPS on behalf of the DNC and the Clinton campaign.
We know from Kim Strassel at the Wall Street Journal that Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson sent the dossier to the FBI and then immediately went to the press to say it was ‘intelligence’. He also gave it to Marc Elias, the Fusion GPS and Clinton campaign attorney, but there is more and it involves John McCain. What we didn’t know is that Simpson gave it to McCain, a little fact the Arizona senator left out when explaining his role.
McCain might come up with an explanation or a denial of all this. We will have to wait and see.
According to the book, McCain was given the dossier directly by Glenn Simpson.
The Daily Caller reports that the book is largely sympathetic of Steele and the dossier, although the document is fully uncorroborated and most of the information came from the Russians.
In the book, however, the author admits:
It has been previously reported that McCain was aware of the dossier before it was published by BuzzFeed on Jan. 10. He was told of its existence in Nov. 2016 by Sir Andrew Wood, a former British ambassador and associate of Steele’s. It was also known that a copy was passed to McCain and his associate, David Kramer.
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What was not known was that McCain was provided a final copy of the dossier directly by Simpson, the former Wall Street Journal reporter who started Fusion GPS.
“Less than twenty-four hours later, Kramer returned to Washington. Next, Simpson shared a copy of the dossier confidentially with McCain.”
McCain’s spokeswoman did not respond to The Daily Caller’s request for comment.
It does seem that McCain was far more involved in the dossier than he has admitted. Why was his aide’s trip to the UK, with all that subterfuge, necessary? Or was it cover?
When McCain told his tale, he left out the part about Simpson giving him a copy, possibly because it makes him look like a willing partner with Hillary Clinton in the opposition research.
Was McCain simply a dupe?
WHAT MCCAIN DID TELL US
McCain has said that on November 18, he was introduced to a “former senior western diplomat” [Sir Andrew Wood] who had set eyes on the documents and knew who put them together, telling the Arizona Republican that the individual was “highly reliable.” This was to have taken place at the Halifax International Security Forum.
When questioned by the media, Wood never admitted he told McCain about the dossier. he chose his words very carefully according to the guardian at the time.
After hearing about the dossier, McCain said he dispatched a “trusted emissary” who flew across the Atlantic to meet the source of the documents at an airport that the Guardian did not name.
The emissary was David Kramer, a Democrat operative.
The emissary was former State Department official, David Kramer, who worked in the Hillary Clinton State Department and is senior director for the McCain Institute for International Leadership. The McCain Institute has taken large donations from George Soros, the Sentinel reports.
David Kramer was instructed to look for a man with a copy of the Financial Times and that’s how the individuals met, with the source taking McCain’s emissary back to his house and giving the American a copy of the documents.
Within 24 hours, the dossier was in Washington, though the contents of the file couldn’t be verified without an investigation, according to the guardian’s retelling.
McCain, the Guardian said, was worried that his actions might be interpreted as revenge [yeah, we’re sure he was worried], but he decided to hand over the documents to FBI Director James Comey on December 9 anyway.
Why all the clandestine spy stuff?
Not only is this suspect, not only did Fusion GPS portray opposition research to the press as intelligence, but it set off the media hysteria.
IT SET OFF A MEDIA ANTI-TRUMP WAR
In a section of The Daily Caller piece by Chuck Ross, subtitled “Reporters at competing outlets cooperated on anti-Trump efforts,” it reveals that mainstream media reports, fiercely competitive over scoops and exclusives, colluded together in an effort to push Trump-Russia hysteria.
In the book, Harding describes how reporters at competing outlets rallied together as part of an effort to expose Trump’s alleged Russia ties.
“There was healthy competition still, but reporters on different titles began working together on some stories. There were formal press consortiums and ad hoc conversations between onetime rivals,” Harding writes.
“I talked to The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Financial Times in London, Reuters, Mother Jones, The Daily Beast, CNN, and others. Such conversations took place in New York, Washington, London, Munich, and Sarajevo. Some happened in glossy conference rooms, others in the corners of pubs over warm ale.”
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