It turns out that McCain and his aide David Kramer spread the unverified dossier to a dozen [anti-Trump] reporters before BuzzFeed published it. It is no secret that McCain hated Trump.
BuzzFeed published it after they learned the President was [barely] briefed [and mostly kept in the dark] by the duplicitous Jim Comey. The President was only briefed enough for BuzzFeed to claim a leak.
MCCAIN AND HIS LONGTIME ALLY SPOKE WITH A DOZEN [ANTI-TRUMP] REPORTERS ABOUT THE DOSSIER
In a court deposition unsealed Thursday, testimony by John McCain’s longtime ally and friend, David Kramer admits he spoke to a dozen reporters and a congressman about the dossier and shared it with them.
David Kramer, a former State Department official and John McCain’s aide, said in a deposition on Dec. 13, 2017 that he provided a copy of Christopher Steele’s dossier to reporters from McClatchy, NPR, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and BuzzFeed and CNN’s Carl Bernstein.
He also shared the report with State Department official Victoria Nuland, Obama National Security Counsel official Celeste Wallander and Illinois GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger
The McCain protegé said he also met Mother Jones’s David Corn, The Guardian’s Julian Borger, and Washington Post reporters Tom Hamburger and Rosalind Helderman. Kramer also said that ABC News’s Brian Ross showed him a copy of some of Steele’s memos.
Kramer’s contact at McClatchy was Peter Stone, a reporter who worked on two debunked stories about former Trump attorney Michael Cohen that are based on allegations from Steele’s dossier.
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All of those people, including Kinzinger, are not Trump fans.
Kramer and McCain were likely chosen to be conduits to the media since McCain is a Republican and it would look less political, Kramer said. After the information was given to McCain by British diplomat Sir Andrew Wood, McCain briefed then-FBI Director Jim Comey.
McCain’s buddy Kramer said Steele asked him to meet with CNN’s Bernstein and BuzzFeed’s Ken Bensinger. And in many cases of his meetings with the media, Christopher Steele — who hated Trump and authored the dossier — and Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson — who worked on the dossier as opposition research for Hillary Clinton — gave the okay.
Kramer said that two of the reporters, Corn and Borger, appeared to have inside knowledge about McCain’s plans to meet with Comey regarding the dossier.
The McCain ally claims he never gave permission for the dossier to be copied but left reporters alone in a room to review it. They photographed each page. Kramer further insisted he told them it was unverified and later told BuzzFeed to take the story down or they would get “people killed.”
Really?
Kramer admitted he lied to Steele about giving the story to Bensinger at BuzzFeed because he didn’t want his friendship to end with Steele.
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