Thread by @Peaceful_411

/Thread - Christopher Steele trusted one man in the Senate: John McCain

amp.businessinsider.com/how-john-mccai…

2/ May 22, 2018: McCain describes how he received the Steele dossier that contains the most salacious allegations about Trump and Russia

3/ The Republican senator was attending an annual security conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia shortly after the presidential election in November 2016 when retired a British diplomat approached him.

4/ McCain didn't recall ever having a previous conversation w/ Sir Andrew Wood, but may have met him before in passing. Chris Brose, a staff member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, & David Kramer, a former assistant sec of state w/Russian expertise, joined McCain & Wood.

5/ After discussing Russian election interference for a few minutes, Wood explained why he'd approached McCain in the first place.

6/ "He told me he knew a former MI6 officer by the name of Christopher Steele, who had been commissioned to investigate connections btwn the Trump cmpgn & Russian agents as well as potentially compromising info about the Pres-elect that Putin allegedly possessed," McCain wrote.

7/ Wood told McCain that Steele had compiled a report, while careful to note the information was unverified, which the former British spy "strongly believed merited a thorough examination by counterintelligence experts."

8/ "Our impromptu meeting felt charged with a strange intensity," McCain wrote. "No one wise-cracked to lighten the mood. We spoke in lowered voices. The room was dimly lit, and the atmosphere was eerie."

9/ It all seemed "too strange a scenario to believe" at first, he wrote, but the six-term senator felt that "even a remote risk that the President of the United States might be vulnerable to Russian extortion had to be investigated."

10/ After further discussion, the group agreed to send Kramer to London to meet Steele. When Kramer returned from the meeting and told McCain that Steele seemed to be a reputable source, the Republican senator agreed to receive a copy of the dossier.

11/ "The allegations were disturbing, but I had no idea which if any were true," McCain said. "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."

12/ "I put the dossier in my office safe, called the office of the director of the FBI, Jim Comey, and asked for a meeting," said McCain.

13/ McCain ultimately turned the dossier over to Comey in a meeting on December 9, 2016 that he said lasted about 10 minutes.

"I did what DUTY DEMANDED I do," McCain wrote, adding that anyone who disagrees with his decision can "go to hell."

14/ McCain wrote that he suspects Wood approached him about the Steele dossier because he has been such a persistent, staunch critic of Putin over the years, and that he would "take their concerns seriously."

15/CODA:

16/CODA II: John McCain: ‘Vladimir Putin Is an Evil Man’

In an excerpt from his new memoir, Sen. McCain discusses his longstanding opposition to the Russian strongman—and his own role in receiving ‘the Steele dossier’ about Donald Trump
wsj.com/articles/john-…

Thank you for your lifelong service, @SenJohnMcCain. We won't let you down. 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸