A resurfaced interview reveals individual responsible for leaking the Steele Dossier to Buzzfeed in 2017 did so as a “Hail Mary” attempt to prevent former President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
David Kramer, a former State Department official and associate to late Arizona Sen. John McCain, leaked copies of the dossier by former British spy Christopher Steele to Buzzfeed News and multiple other sources two months before the inauguration.
In 2019, NPR interviewed Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, the two men responsible for hiring Steele on behalf of Hillary Clinton and the Democrat National Committee (DNC).
The Daily Caller reports:
SIMPSON: That’s correct. But it was before the inauguration. So what we say in the book is that the person who has now admitted to leaking the dossier was apparently trying to do was to thwart the swearing-in of Trump. And he believed that if this information got out, it might lead to – somehow to Trump’s inaugural being put off.
Fritsch chimed in, “the ultimate Hail Mary pass and ill-advised.”
Gross then asked the straightforward question, “who was the leaker?”
FRITSCH: So there was a John McCain – a person who was close to John McCain by the name of David Kramer, who’s a former – worked in the State Department for human rights for many years and is a – an avowed Russia hawk. He became aware of the document via Christopher Steele and his network and his former colleagues in MI6. They met with Senator McCain at the Halifax forum, which is an international forum not unlike the Aspen Institute Forum. They decided that they needed to pursue this. David Kramer flew to London; met with Christopher Steele, who showed him the dossier. Mister – Chris was wary of giving the document to David Kramer to carry on an airplane, so he asked us to hand it to him, which Glenn did.
Later on in the interview, Gross repeated the news of Kramer’s alleged plan and asked if it was “ironic” that a McCain “aide” made the dossier public.
“Do you find it ironic that it was an aide of John McCain’s who made the dossier public in the hopes of preventing Donald Trump from actually getting inaugurated?” Gross asked. “And it’s Lindsey Graham, one of McCain’s closest friends, who has been one of the leaders trying to question the Mueller report, trying to question the research that you did and supporting Donald Trump?”
“I think it’s ironic,” Simpson responded. “I think it’s hypocritical. And I think it’s depressing that a lot of people who know better are now standing up for Donald Trump. So yes, I think – you know, the Republicans paid for the first half of our investigation, and now they’re claiming it was all a Democratic hoax. It doesn’t make sense.”
