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McCain: Releasing Steele Dossier Was 'Duty,' Anyone Who Disagrees Can 'Go to Hell'

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Arizona senator and longtime Trump opponent John McCain has no remorse for passing along the infamous Trump dossier to the FBI, according to excerpts released from his upcoming book, “The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights, and Other Appreciations.”

The 81-year-old senator admitted in January last year that he gave the FBI the dossier, which was filled with unverified allegations against President Donald Trump and raised the possibility that the president may be vulnerable to Russian blackmail.

McCain received hard copies of the dossier from Fusion GPS, a political opposition research firm, and then gave a copy to the FBI, Fox News reported.

Later in January, the entire dossier was published by BuzzFeed.

“Late last year, I received sensitive information that has since been made public,” McCain said then.

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

Now, over one year later, McCain said he “would do it again,” according to excerpts from his book published by the Guardian.

McCain wrote that he did “what duty demanded I do” and “anyone who doesn’t like it can go to hell.”

The Republican senator said the nature of the allegations meant he had to take them seriously.

Do you think John McCain made a mistake to give the dossier to the FBI?

“I had no idea which if any were true,” he wrote. “I could not independently verify any of it, and so I did what any American who cares about our nation’s security should have done.”


The president has consistently denied the veracity of the dossier’s contents, calling it the “fake news dossier.”


An exclusive report from Fox News last year stated that former British spy and the man behind the dossier, Christopher Steele, used McCain as his American contact to get the document to the FBI.

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“The man (Sir Andrew Wood) 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,” Fox News reported.

“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,” the report continued.

McCain wrote that after receiving the document, he immediately passed it on to then-FBI Director James Comey.

“I said I didn’t know what to make of it, and I trusted the FBI would examine it carefully and investigate its claims,” he wrote. “With that, I thanked the director and left. The entire meeting had probably not lasted longer than ten minutes.”

“The Restless Wave” is slated to be published May 22.

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Rebekah Baker is the former deputy managing editor of The Western Journal.
Rebekah Baker is the former deputy managing editor of The Western Journal. She graduated from Grove City College with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science. She has written hundreds of articles on topics like the sanctity of life, free speech and freedom of religion.
Education
Bachelor of Arts in Political Science
Location
Phoenix, Arizona
Languages Spoken
English
Topics of Expertise
Politics, Faith




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