Dick Morris: Now We Know Why Dossier Authors Needed McCain To Get Anti-Trump Dossier To Comey
It was always hard to understand why dossier author Christopher Steele needed someone else to transmit his phony dossier to FBI Director James Comey.
After all, shortly before the election, Steele told David Corn of Mother Jones that “he regularly consulted with th U.S. government agencies on Russian matters.” He informed Corn that he had given the FBI the first memo in the dossier and characterized the FBI’s reaction as “shock and horror.”
According to Steele, the FBI then asked for his sources and materials, so it would seem like he wouldn’t need an intermediary to hand the full dossier to Comey.
But now we know that all was not well with the relationship between Steele and the FBI.
In fact, the FBI had fired him for discussing his role with them and for reporting confidential material to the media.
So, apparently, Comey wouldn’t be taking his calls.
But the pro-Clinton/anti-Trump people didn’t let that stop them. They kept Steele’s termination to themselves. Then they searched for a highly respected person to lend credibility to the dossier and deliver it to Comey.
Enter John McCain.
McCain was the perfect target for delivering the anti-Trump document. He despised Trump for several reasons. First, he hated him for Trump’s public disparagement of his years as a POW. Trump said McCain wasn’t a hero because he had been captured.
Understandably, McCain, who suffered lifelong disabilities after his years of torture, was upset. In addition, as a strong supporter of the pro-Western forces in the Ukraine, McCain was shocked by Trump’s pro-Russian statements and hiring of Paul Manafort, a long-time consultant to the Russian puppet in the Ukraine.
The dossier folks went into action. At a conference on national security in Nova Scotia, McCain was approached by Sir Andrew Wood, a former U.K. ambassador to Russia, who was secretly working with Steele. Wood briefed McCain on the dossier — although he claimed had not seen it. Wood claimed he was worried that Trump might be vulnerable to bribery if the allegations were true.
Then a cloak and dagger James Bond-like operation was put in place and a McCain associate visited Steele to get the dossier. It was sent by encrypted fax to Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS, co-author of the dossier, who gave it to the McCain associate.
Then McCain set up a meeting with Comey.
Initially, McCain denied that he had the dossier, but he soon changed his story and admitted that he had been given the dossier. Within a few days, he met with James Comey and gave him the dossier. It was then summarized and given to President Barack Obama and President-elect Trump. And then, of course, it was leaked and published by BUZZFEED.
That was the goal — to get it out in public to try to destroy Trump.
No mention of the firing of Steele. No mention of Hillary Clinton funding it. No mention that the allegations could not be verified.
The Clintons had succeeded in getting the lurid and phony allegations out in public — even if it was too late for the election. They had produced and commissioned the dossier, paid for it and arranged for it to go into the public domain.
Steele’s termination by the FBI was just a bump in the road.
Dick Morris is a former adviser to President Bill Clinton as well as a political author, pollster and consultant. His most recent book, “Rogue Spooks,” was written with his wife, Eileen McGann.
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