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Did John McCain
'Launder' Dodgy Trump Intel Dossier?
By Daniel McAdams
January 13,
2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- We all know what money laundering is. When you need to
hide the fact that the money in your possession comes by
way of nefarious sources, you transfer it through
legitimate sources and it appears clean on the other
end. It's standard practice among thieves,
extortionists, drug dealers, and the like.
The same practice can even be used to "clean"
intelligence that comes by dubious sources, and
sometimes even US Senators may involve themselves in
such dark activities. Case in point US Senator John
McCain (R-AZ), whose virulent opposition to Donald Trump
is outmatched only by his total dedication to fomenting
a new cold (or hot?) war with Russia.
While the world was caught up in the more salacious
passages from a purported opposition research report on
Donald Trump showing all manner of collusion with
Putin's Russia -- and Russia's possession of
blackmail-able
kompromat on Trump -- something very
interesting was revealed about the custody of the
information. The "dossier" on Trump seemed to follow two
chains of custody. One involved the media, which in
October were given and encouraged to publish the
"report" by the authors of the report (or their
sponsors), purportedly a former British intelligence
officer working for a private intelligence company. Only
David Corn of Mother Jones bit, and his resulting story
picked over the report to construct a mess of innuendo
on Trump's relation to Russia that was short on any
evidence.
The other chain of custody is what interests us.
Remember, we have a dubious report constructed for the
purpose of discrediting Donald Trump, which was first
commissioned by one of his Republican primary rivals and
later completed under the patronage of someone in
Hillary's camp. It was created for a specific political
purpose, which may have tainted its reception among more
objective governmental sources had that been known.
Enter John McCain. According to
media reports, the dossier was handed to Sen. McCain
-- again, a strong Trump opponent and proponent of
conflict with Russia -- by a former UK ambassador (who
presumably received it from the source, a former British
intelligence officer).
Senator McCain then felt duty-bound to bring this
"intelligence report" directly (and privately) to the
personal attention of FBI Director James Comey. From
this hand-off to Comey, the report then became part of
the Intelligence Community's assessment of Russian
interference in the US presidential election.
Senator McCain is the Chairman of the Senate Armed
Services Committee, one of the most powerful members of
the US Senate. Consider the impact of being handed a
strange report by some private
intelligence-firm-for-hire or a media outlet versus
being handed a report by one of the most powerful men in
the US government. McCain's involving himself in the
case gave the report a sense of legitimacy that it would
not otherwise have had. Was this "laundering"
intentional on his part? We do not know, but given his
position on Trump and Russia that possibility must be
considered.
So great was the pressure on McCain to come clean on his
decision to meet privately with the FBI Director to hand
over this report that he
released a statement earlier today portraying
himself as nothing more than a good citizen, passing
information to the proper authorities for them to act on
if they see fit.
Do you believe the Senator from Arizona?
Copyright ©
2017 by RonPaul Institute.
The views
expressed in this article are the author's own and do
not necessarily reflect Information Clearing House
editorial policy. |
