Republican Sen. John McCain had no clue if the documents he handed the FBI detailing alleged Russian dirt on President-elect Donald Trump were accurate, he said in a statement Wednesday.
“Late last year, I received sensitive information that has since been made public,” he said in a statement . “Upon examination of the contents, and unable to make a judgment about their accuracy, I delivered the information to the Director of the FBI. That has been the extent of my contact with the FBI or any other government agency regarding this issue.”
McCain obtained the dossier last year when it was circulating in Washington, D. C., after it was put together by an opposition researcher paid by Republicans and Democrats to dig up dirt on Trump during the campaign. The memos detail serious and explosive information the Russians allegedly have on Trump, and McCain decided to forward them along to the intelligence community.
Neither the intelligence community nor an army of motivated journalists were able to verify any of the claims in the document, but it sprang into the spotlight Tuesday after news broke President Barack Obama and Trump were briefed on its existence. Buzzfeed then published the entire dossier, which it notes in the story is not verified and contains “potentially unverifiable” claims.
McCain’s statement adds to a swirl of skepticism regarding the claims Wednesday, as a growing number of journalists and pundits question Buzzfeed’s decision to print unverified rumors.
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Anti-fossil fuel activists lined up outside confirmation hearings for President-elect Donald Trump’s secretary of state nominee wearing campy dinosaur costumes and protesting against Exxon Mobil.
Demonstrators associated with environmentalists group 350.org gathered in Washington, D. C, Wednesday to protest Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson’s appearance in front of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
“Hey, hey, ho, Rex Tillerson has got to go,” the protesters shouted as the hearings began. The Tyrannosaurus Rex outfits were a play on the secretary of state nominee’s initials.
Protests against the oil man have ratcheted up recently as Democrats voice concern about Tillerson’s relationship with Russia — and anti-fossil fuel activists, for their part, believe Exxon was part of a decades-long campaign to hide climate research on climate change.
Our foreign policy & future can’t be in the hands of a Big Oil exec. like Rex Tillerson. We’re at the Senate urging Senators to #RejectRex pic.twitter.com/rhC55VCkDy
— 350 dot org (@350) January 11, 2017
Campaigns against Exxon began last year when environmentalist media outlet Inside Climate News (ICN) reported about Exxon’s research. ICN, widely considered a environmentalist public relations firm , also alleges that Amoco, Phillips, Texaco, Shell, and others joined Exxon in misleading the public about the supposed effects global warming has on sea levels.
Th anti-Exxon protests have stumbled recently as anti-Exxon demonstrators pushed to link every weather disaster to Exxon. They associated mud slides in California to the oil company’s actions; Exxon was responsible for hurricane-related flooding in far gone parts of the world, according to these protesters.
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MOSCOW – The Kremlin said on Wednesday it was “total nonsense” that Russian officials had assembled a file of compromising information on US President-elect Donald Trump.
Two US officials said on Tuesday evening that the heads of four US intelligence agencies had last week presented Trump with classified documents which included unverified claims that Russian intelligence operatives had compromising information about him.

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Donald Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway today called the allegations that the president-elect was compromised by Russian agents and that his aides were in cahoots with Russian hackers “unsubstantiated, uncorroborated. “
“This is a report from the internet, not from the intelligence community, these 35 pages rife with misspellings, completely unverified,” Conway said on ” Good Morning America ” today.
Conway added, “I don’t even think this is fake news. I think it’s just fake. I would take the news word right out of it. “
She called it “nonsense from the internet.”
Trump tweeted Tuesday night seemingly in response to the news reports, “FAKE NEWS – A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT! “
FAKE NEWS – A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!
The unsubstantiated allegations were in a dossier Democratic political operatives gave to the FBI , as well as several news organizations, in August. Buzzfeed published the memos Tuesday night, neither proving nor disproving the authenticity of them. None of the allegations in these documents have been verified by ABC News.
The intelligence community reportedly presented Trump and President Obama a two-page summary of the unverifiable allegations in a classified intelligence briefing last week.
Conway declined to confirm that because she said it was a classified briefing. She also expressed concern that “we now have intelligence officials divulging information that they are sworn not to divulge.”
Conway also defended Trump Organization lawyer Michael Cohen, whose name appears the pages of the unverified document, against the accusations that in August he met with Kremlin officials in Prague, the Czech Republic.
“Dragging through the mud innocent people, as a way to add some flourish to what is already an unsubstantiated report, I think is troubling,” Conway said, adding that Cohen was in California and not Prague at the time.
“Michael Cohen has never been to Prague,” she said. “We looked at his passport.”
In another interview this morning, Conway told “CBS This Morning” that Trump would address the claims in his news conference scheduled for later today.

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Seemingly citing a spokesperson for Russian President Vladimir Putin , Mr. Trump pointed out that Moscow had said the report — which the president-elect charged as having been “paid for by political opponents” — was “A COMPLETE AND TOTAL FABRICATION, UTTER NONSENSE.”
Russia just said the unverified report paid for by political opponents is “A COMPLETE AND TOTAL FABRICATION, UTTER NONSENSE. ” Very unfair!
Russia, he went on to say, had “never tried to use leverage over me.” He distanced himself from the country further saying he has “NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA – NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!”
Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA – NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!
I win an election easily, a great “movement” is verified, and crooked opponents try to belittle our victory with FAKE NEWS. A sorry state!
Extensive reporting has shown, however, that the president-elect has had business ties to the country — and to some of its most important power players.
CBS News’ Julianna Goldman reported on his connections to Russia in July of last year , showing that Trump had thought of Russia as being a appealing business climate and that he had attempted to bring his brand to the country for decades. In 2013, Trump’s Miss Universe pageant was held in Moscow — thanks, in part, to the dealings of Crocus Group, a Russian real estate development firm that. In a 2007 deposition, Mr. Trump even discussed plans for a Trump International hotel in the country.
“It’s ridiculous that I wouldn’t be investing in Russia,” Trump had said in his deposition. “Russia is one of the hottest places in the world for investment.”
On Wednesday, the president-elect also seemed to criticize U. S. intelligence agencies, saying they “should never have allowed this fake news to ‘leak’ into the public.”
He then questioned: “Are we living in Nazy Germany?”
Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to “leak” into the public. One last shot at me. Are we living in Nazi Germany?
The president-elect made the comments hours before he is scheduled to hold a press conference Wednesday morning.
According to top aide Kellyanne Conway, who spoke to “CBS This Morning” earlier in the day, Mr. Trump is expected to address the claims of compromising Russian information during his formal news conference, his first since he was elected to the White House in November.

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