Breitbart: TEL AVIV — David Kramer, a long-time advisor to late Senator John McCain, revealed that he spent “a good hour or two” talking to two Wall Street Journal editors in a failed attempt to convince them not to publish the name of Christopher Steele, the former British spy who authored the infamous, largely-discredited anti-Trump dossier.
In a deposition on Dec. 13, 2017 that was recently posted online, Kramer recounted briefing numerous reporters in private about the dossier.
He admitted that, at the request of Steele, he held a meeting about the dossier with a reporter from BuzzFeed News who he says snapped photos of the controversial document without Kramer’s permission when he left the room to go to the bathroom. That meeting was held at the McCain Institute office in Washington, Kramer stated.
BuzzFeed infamously published Steele’s full dossier on January 10, 2017, setting off a firestorm of news media coverage about the document.
BuzzFeed posted the full dossier hours after CNN first reported the same day the leaked information that the controversial contents of the dossier were presented during classified briefings inside classified documents presented one week earlier to then-president Barack Obama and President-elect Donald Trump.
In the deposition, Kramer disclosed that, at the request of Steele, the McCain deputy also met with CNN’s Carl Bernstein to brief him in the dossier. Bernstein’s byline appeared on the January 10 CNN article first reporting on the dossier contents.
Neither CNN nor BuzzFeed named Steele as the author of the dossier in their respective reports.
Steele’s name was first disclosed one day later in a Wall Street Journal article titled, “Christopher Steele, Ex-British Intelligence Officer, Said to Have Prepared Dossier on Trump.”
In his deposition, Kramer says that he tried to convince the Wall Street Journal not to reveal Steele’s name.
He says that Steele called him “within an hour” after the memo was initially published, ostensibly referring to BuzzFeed’s January 10 publication.
The next day, after he learned about the pending Wall Street Journal story, Kramer says that he called the newspaper about withholding Steele’s identity: more here
And…
Lindsey Graham: A Lot of People Now Defending McCain Called Him ‘Crazy, War Mongerer’.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Wednesday called out critics of President Trump who are using his remarks about the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) to attack him.
“A lot of people are coming to John’s defense now that called him crazy and a war mongerer, so it’s kind of interesting to see the politics of how this dispute’s being used to bash Trump by people who are against both Trump and McCain,” he said, according to ABC News.
Trump has criticized McCain over the past several days, after reports surfaced that McCain had asked one of his aides to distribute the Democrat-funded and Fusion GPS-produced dossier that claimed collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in the days after the 2016 election.
Trump critics have been calling on Republicans to speak out against Trump’s criticism of McCain, and particularly on Graham, a close friend of McCain.
Graham said during the interview that he did not like Trump’s comments on McCain, but that it would not stop him from working with the president. MORE
Where is mccain’s grave? (Gotta take a leak)
I never liked McCain, and even less so now that he is dead and elevated to some kind of political messiah like status.
“John McCain Aide Tried to Keep Paper…”
They’re still pussy footing around the truth.
They are deliberately re-directing attention away from mccain’s primary role in the initial distribution of the ‘dossier.’ Therein is the crime. This consideration is just a detail of the gross crime.
He worked for mccain. Mccain was paying him while he was doing that, and it was undoubtedly done at mccain’s direction.
Call a spade a spade and put it on the chyron.
mccain allowed himself to be used for the initial distribution of the dossier, in attempt to give it validity
If John McCain is held up as a wise person, why on earth would a smart person use such a low level thinker such as David Kramer as an advisor???
McCain was an underhanded sneak the whole time in office. Backstabbing was his stock in trade. The wretched lowlife was pure evil and the world is a better place for having him dead and covered over.