Testimony: John McCain Associate Initiated Contact With Ex-Spy Steele To Obtain Trump Dossier

breitbart.com

TEL AVIV — In testimony released publicly earlier this week, the founder of the controversial opposition research firm Fusion GPS revealed that an associate of Sen. John McCain first reached out to the former British spy who compiled the infamous, largely discredited 35-page dossier on President Donald Trump in order to obtain information for McCain to pass to the FBI leadership.

The storyline of McCain’s associate initiating contact with former intelligence agent Christopher Steele, who was paid by Fusion GPS to compile the anti-Trump charges, for the first time indicates that McCain’s camp may have taken the initiative to obtain the shoddy dossier. Fusion GPS’s work against Trump was reportedly funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

Last December, it was revealed that it was McCain who passed the controversial dossier contents produced by Fusion GPS to then-FBI Director James Comey, whose agency reportedly utilized the dossier as a basis for its probe into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

A January 11 statement from McCain attempted to explain why he provided the documents to the FBI but did not mention how he came to possess the dossier or whether he knew who funded it.

“Upon examination of the contents, and unable to make a judgment about their accuracy, I delivered the information to the director of the FBI,” McCain said at the time. “That has been the extent of my contact with the FBI or any other government agency regarding this issue.”

In August 22 testimony released earlier this week, Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn R. Simpson divulged that contact between Steele and McCain’s office was initiated by David Kramer, a former State Department official who was described by Simpson as a “long-time advisor to Senator McCain.”

Simpson said that Kramer related to Steele that Kramer and McCain were at a security conference in Nova Scotia where the contents of the dossier were discussed with the two by Sir Andrew Wood, a former British ambassador to Moscow. Kramer had reached out to Steele for more information, Simpson stated.