FOX: The man who says he acted as a “go-between” last year to inform Sen. John McCain about the controversial “dossier” containing salacious allegations about then-candidate Donald Trump is speaking out, revealing how the ex-British spy who researched the document helped coordinate its release to the FBI, the media and Capitol Hill.
“My mission was essentially to be a go-between and a messenger, to tell the senator and assistants that such a dossier existed,” Sir Andrew Wood told Fox News in an exclusive interview with senior executive producer Pamela K. Browne.
Fox News spoke to Wood at the 2017 Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia, Canada. As Britain’s ambassador to Moscow from 1995-2000, Wood witnessed the end of Russian President Boris Yeltsin and the rise of Vladimir Putin.
Just after the U.S. presidential election in November 2016, Arizona GOP Sen. McCain spoke at the same security conference. Wood says he was instructed — by former British spy Christopher Steele — to reach out to the senior Republican, whom Wood called “a good man,” about the unverified document.
Wood insists that he’s never read the dossier that his good friend and longtime colleague prepared. It was commissioned by opposition research firm Fusion GPS and funded by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign.
In August 2016, “[Steele] came to me to tell me what was in it, and why it … was important,” Wood said. “He made it very clear … yes, it was raw intelligence, but it needed putting into proper context before you could judge it fully.”
August 2016 is a critical period, just after the FBI opened the Russia meddling probe, and after then-director James Comey recommended against prosecution for Clinton’s mishandling of classified information.
Wood said Steele had “already been in contact with the FBI” at the time.
“He said there was corroborating evidence in the United States, from which I assumed he was working with an American company,” Wood said.
British court records reviewed by Fox News as well as U.S. congressional testimony revealed that Steele was directed and paid at least $168,000 by Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson to push the research that fall to five American media outlets. According to British court documents, Steele met with The New York Times (twice), The Washington Post (twice), CNN, The New Yorker and Yahoo News (twice).
“Each of these interviews was conducted in person and with a member of Fusion also present,” according to the records associated with separate civil litigation against Steele and Fusion GPS.
Wood said he’d heard of Fusion GPS, as the group Steele was working with, but had “never heard of Mr. Simpson.”
Three weeks after Trump won the presidential election, at the Canadian security conference, the details were finalized for the dossier hand-off to McCain.
McCain will get what’s coming to him eventually.
It may not be that of judgement by man, however.
It still amazes me that Hillary, the DNC, and the MSM spent all this time and money and she STILL lost.
I hope before McCain dies he realizes history will record him as a very large piece of SHIT.
The US Senate needs McCain like a hole in the head. 😉
What amazes me is after all the facts and data, Hillary and her ilk are still walking free and sucking up air that does not belong to them.
The real scandal of last year’s election is that a FISA warrant was issued and a special prosecutor was appointed based on a piece of opposition research that was 99.9% bullshit and everybody involved knew it. The deep state is just so arrogant that they thought they could get away with overthrowing a lawfully elected POTUS because he didn’t sit at their self-designated “cool kids” table. Christ… There seems to be little difference between DC and junior high school now.
Better than watching cable news, LOL.
No such thing as an “ex-spy” – this was Britain fucking with our election, NOT Russia, with a side order of plausible denial.