At least, that’s according to The Washington Post
[Paywall].
In an article titled, "Hero or hired gun? How a British former spy became a flash point in the Russia investigation," the newspaper detailed how McCain came to have a copy of the unverified dossier that he then forwarded to the FBI.
The article erases any doubt that McCain may not have known the origins of the dossier. It’s not clear if the Republican lawmaker knew that the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign provided funding for the research.
Andrew Wood, a former British ambassador to Moscow and friend of Christopher Steele, the ex-British spy behind the dossier, reached out to David Kramer to get the research on Trump into the hands of the Republicans, The Post reported.
Kramer, a former State Department official and close associate of McCain, would arrange for Wood to meet the senator in Canada in December 2016.
Wood described what was in the infamous dossier and told McCain, who he said "was visibly shocked," that he could arrange for him to review it.
"I told him, ’I know there’s a document. I haven’t read it, but it seems to me that it’s reliably set up,’" he said, according to The Post.
More from The Post on what happened next:
Ten days later, in a cloak-and-dagger scene, Kramer and Steele arranged to meet at Heathrow Airport in London. Kramer was told that he should look for a man wearing a blue raincoat and carrying a Financial Times under his arm, according to people familiar with the episode.
Kramer accompanied Steele to his home, where he spent a few hours reviewing the Trump research.
Back in Washington, Kramer received a copy of the dossier from Simpson and completed the handoff to McCain.
Simpson is former Wall Street Journal reporter and Glenn R. Simpson is co-founder of Fusion GPS.
Continues. Surprised? Yeah, me neither.