Trump Takes Pot Shots At McCain, Falsely Claims He Shared Dossier Before Election

GREEN BAY, WI - AUGUST 05: Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump speaks at a Rally In Green Bay, Wisconsin on August 5, 2016 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. (Photo by Darren Hauck/Getty Images)
GREEN BAY, WI - AUGUST 05: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a rally on August 5, 2016 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Trump endorsed House Speaker Paul Ryan, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. Kelly Ay... GREEN BAY, WI - AUGUST 05: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a rally on August 5, 2016 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Trump endorsed House Speaker Paul Ryan, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) during the rally in an effort to heal rifts within the Republican Party. (Photo by Darren Hauck/Getty Images) MORE LESS
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Months after Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) death, President Donald Trump on Saturday and Sunday took pot shots at McCain on Twitter over his role in handing off the so-called “Steele Dossier” to the FBI.

In the tweets, Trump partly reiterated what McCain himself acknowledged in life — that the senator handed off the dossier to the FBI — but also falsely accused McCain of attempting to get the dossier’s contents into media reports before the 2016 election.

The claim is a false distortion of what former McCain aide David Kramer testified to in the defamation suit a Russian tech executive filed against BuzzFeed News, the first outlet to publish the dossier. Though a judge found late last year that BuzzFeed had the right to publish the dossier, Kramer’s testimony was only recently unsealed unsealed.

Trump’s tweets are incorrect in multiple ways: Not only did McCain learn about and obtain the dossier several days after Trump’s election, Kramer said during a deposition that he — not McCain — was in touch with media outlets concerning the dossier in December, also after Trump’s election.

Also, The Washington Post pointed out, McCain graduated fifth-to-last in his 1958 Naval Academy class, not last. Trump has never released his academic record.

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