Graham Contradicts Trump Attacks on McCain Over Disputed Dossier

(Bloomberg) -- Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham said he advised his friend John McCain to give the FBI the so-called Steele dossier on Donald Trump, rebutting the president on a topic that prompted the president to deliver an extended series of attacks on the late senator last week.

Graham told reporters that McCain, who died last year, had shown him the unverified collection of intelligence reports on Trump’s links to Russia that was put together by a former British spy, Christopher Steele. Steele was commissioned to compile the information by an opposition research firm hired by Democrats.

McCain put the dossier in his safe and handed it over to the FBI the next day, Graham said.

Trump and some of his allies have repeatedly accused McCain of giving the dossier to the news media as well as the FBI in order to damage his election campaign. “John McCain that sent the Fake Dossier to the FBI and Media hoping to have it printed BEFORE the Election,” Trump tweeted on March 17 in an initial salvo against McCain.

However McCain didn’t alert the FBI about the dossier until December 2016, a month after the election and after the FBI had begun an investigation of Trump’s campaign. The FBI already was aware of Steele’s work and referenced it in a secret search warrant related to the Trump campaign investigation. Graham said he wants an investigation into how the FBI used the Steele dossier to justify it’s probe.

Graham said that he confronted Trump about the president’s repeatedly disparaging the late senator and that Trump was angry over McCain’s link to the dossier.

"Senator McCain deserves better," Graham said he told Trump. "There were some McCain people who took a piece of garbage and tried to go after Trump after the election. But I told the president it was not John McCain."

To contact the reporter on this story: Steven T. Dennis in Washington at sdennis17@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Laurie Asséo

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