Seven months after the death of Senator John McCain, Donald Trump has launched a new attack against the former Arizona Senator on Twitter.
President Trump took to his favorite social media forum on Saturday to slam McCain for reportedly passing along the Steele Dossier to the FBI. The dossier was compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele and outlined allegations that Trump’s campaign colluded directly with the Russian government during the 2016 presidential campaign. Steele had been stationed in Moscow for decades and was seen as one of the foremost experts on Russian intelligence.
In a statement on Twitter , Trump quoted former Clinton special counsel Ken Starr, who had attacked McCain.
“Spreading the fake and totally discredited Dossier ‘is unfortunately a very dark stain against John McCain,’” Trump wrote. “He had far worse ‘stains’ than this, including thumbs down on repeal and replace after years of campaigning to repeal and replace!”
As The Hill noted, Donald Trump has continued to launch attacks against John McCain for many months after his death from brain cancer. At a meeting with reporters last month, Trump also mocked sales of McCain’s memoir released in the months before his death, saying that it “bombed.”
In the memoir, McCain recounted how he turned over the dossier to federal investigators as he felt it was his obligation to pass along the series allegations.
“I discharged that obligation, and I would do it again. Anyone who doesn’t like it can go to hell,” McCain wrote, via The Hill .
John McCain famously handed over a copy of the dossier to the FBI for investigation, though reports indicated that the FBI, by that point, had already begun an investigation into the alleged connections between Trump’s campaign and Russia. Though Trump has often attacked the dossier as fake, several points have been proven true as the investigation has continued.
The Russia investigation itself has led to a series of indictments and now convictions against top members of Trump’s campaign and cabinet members, including former campaign manager Paul Manafort, who is spending more than seven years in federal prison for a series of financial fraud convictions. Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, is also headed to prison after pleading guilty to a series of federal charges.
Trump attacks John McCain for “spreading the fake and totally discredited dossier” months after his death https://t.co/xy4IMqxcEu pic.twitter.com/gPPh9CV93X
— The Hill (@thehill) March 16, 2019
Donald Trump attacked McCain many times during his life, infamously saying during the 2016 campaign that he did not believe McCain was a war hero because he had been shot down in Vietnam and captured.