The Fake News Showergate saga just keeps getting better. Now McCain and Carl Bernstein are involved.
Sworn Donald Trump enemy John McCain admitted Wednesday that he passed the dossier of claims of a Russian blackmail plot against the president-elect. The Arizona senator issued a public statement amid mounting questions of his exact role in the affair – and how a document riddled with errors and unverifiable claims came to be published.
‘Late last year, I received sensitive information that has since been made public,’ he said. ‘Upon examination of the contents, and unable to make a judgment about their accuracy, I delivered the information to the Director of the FBI.’
The chain of how the document reached the FBI is not officially known. However Carl Bernstein, the Watergate reporter who contributed to the first story about its existence, published by CNN on Tuesday afternoon, suggested that McCain was handed it by a former British ambassador to Moscow.
Bernstein told CNN: ‘It came from a former British MI6 agent who was hired from a political opposition research firm in Washington who was doing work about Donald Trump for both republican and democratic candidates opposed to Trump.
‘They were looking at Trumps business ties, they saw some questionable things about Russians, about his businesses in Russia, they in turn hired this MI6 former investigator, he then came up with additional information from his Russian sources, he was very concerned by the implications of it, he then took it to an FBI colleague that he had known in his undercover work for years, he took it to this FBI man in Rome who turned it over to the bureau in Washington in August.
‘And then, a former British ambassador to Russia independently was made aware of these findings and he took the information to John McCain – Senator John McCain of Arizona – in the period just after the election, and showed it to McCain – additional findings.
‘McCain was sufficiently disturbed by what he read to take it to FBI director James Comey himself personally, they had a five minute meeting the two men, very little was said, McCain turned it over to him and is now awaiting what the FBI’s response is to that information.’
The identity of the former British ambassador has not been disclosed.
Only one former British ambassador to Washington remains in UK government service, Sir Tim Barrow, who went on to be Foreign Office political director and is now Britain’s ambassador to the European Union.
Obama was a terrible president. No doubt about it. Dreadful. But it really does appear that McCain would have been considerably worse. Anyhow, by the time this is over, I won’t be surprised if Lee Harvey Oswald, Madonna, and Woodstock all somehow factor in.
Meanwhile, the God-Emperor Ascendant himself is giving a press conference that will presumably address this. He’s every bit as combative as during the campaign; now he’s talking about the DNC vulnerability to hackers and “the horrible things” that John Podesta said about Hillary.
The media is addressing him as “Mr. President-Elect”. Feels good. HOLY CATS! He just announced that both the President and the Vice-President are NOT governed by conflict-of-interest laws and has been for several administrations.
I don’t think the media is ready for this level of openness.
“I am not going to give you a question. You are fake news”
– President-Elect Donald Trump to CNN
This is what EIGHT YEARS OF WINNING is going to look like.