Dan Nowicki

The Republic | azcentral.com

How U.S. Sen. John McCain came to obtain a file of potentially compromising but unsubstantiated research on President-elect Donald Trump and alleged Russian ties remains unclear, and his office is declining to provide details that would clarify when and how he learned about the explosive dossier.

McCain, R-Ariz., this week confirmed he received the "sensitive information," which originally was compiled as anti-Trump opposition research during the 2016 primaries and general election, and gave the explosive file to the FBI.

"I did what any citizen should do: I received sensitive information, and then I handed it over to the proper agency of government and had nothing else to do with the issue," McCain told reporters Wednesday.

The FBI apparently was already aware of the memos, or at least most of them. The memos became news this week when CNN reported that intelligence officials had given Trump a summary of the allegations. The website BuzzFeed subsequently published the memos.

Trump has denounced the controversy about the potential Kremlin blackmail material as "fake news" and "a total political witch hunt."

Because of the well-known history of antagonism between McCain and Trump, McCain has been the target of harsh blowback from Trump allies on social media and on right-leaning websites.

The widely read Drudge Report on Wednesday cast McCain's involvement in the worst possible light with the pejorative headline: "Demented McCain turns dirty ..."

Asked by a journalist why his source came to him with the anti-Trump information, McCain said he had "no idea."

"I don't know if it's credible or not, but the information, I thought, deserved to be delivered to the FBI, the appropriate agency of government," McCain said.

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Published reports conflict about how, when and from whom McCain learned about and obtained the memos.

In a story published late Wednesday on its website, the New York Times reported, without attribution, that McCain caught wind of the anti-Trump memos and got copies last month from David J. Kramer of Arizona State University's McCain Institute for International Leadership.

That would contradict other published accounts, including one Tuesday in the Guardian, which reported McCain "was informed about the existence of the documents separately by an intermediary from a western allied state" and "dispatched an emissary overseas to meet the source."

CNN reported Tuesday that McCain learned about the dossier from "a former British diplomat who had been posted in Moscow."

On Thursday, the U.K. Independent quoted Sir Andrew Wood, a former British ambassador to Russia, as saying he talked to McCain at November's Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia about the possibility of "Kompromat" — Moscow's term for blackmail material — and other Trump-Russian activities.

But Wood also told the Independent he "would like to stress that I did not pass on any dossier to Senator McCain or anyone else and I did not see a dossier at the time."

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The Wall Street Journal and other publications have identified Christopher Steele, a former British MI6 officer, as the author of the memos. Steele apparently has gone into hiding, according to the BBC.

McCain's office did not respond to The Arizona Republic's requests seeking confirmation of Kramer as his source of the memos, or other clarifying details about his role in the episode. However, on Thursday afternoon, the Senate office did provide a one-sentence written statement from McCain disputing a key element of the Guardian's version.

"Media reports that I dispatched an emissary overseas to meet the source of the information I received are false," McCain said.

According to his McCain Institute bio, Kramer, a former assistant U.S. secretary of State for democracy, human rights and labor, is the agency's senior director for human rights and democracy and has expertise in Russian issues.

The Republic contacted Kramer via email seeking to confirm if he was McCain's source for the dossier and other details about the timeline of events. Kramer responded Thursday morning only that he would try to get back later in the day, but had not connected by press time.

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