Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., struck a pragmatic pose on leaks, in the midst of a new rash of stories about Russian contacts with President Trump’s team.
“If it’s about some mistake I made I hate it, but if it’s about someone else I love it,” he cracked while talking to the Brookings Institution Board of Directors.
Trump has been beset by leaks, ranging from revelations that his first national security advisor had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about conversations with the Russian ambassador to partial transcripts of the president’s phone calls with foreign leaders. Trump has complained about the leak and accused the U.S. intelligence community of seeding the news in order to undermine his presidency.
Trump has accused former Obama administration officials of working to embarrass him. “And some of the leaks possibly come from that group, which are really serious because they are very bad in terms of national security,” he said Wednesday. “But I also understand that is politics. In terms of him being behind things, that’s politics. And it will probably continue.”
His fight with the intelligence community began when the FBI and the CIA reported to Congress that they believed Russia had stolen and leaked Democratic documents during the 2016 election in order to boost Trump’s campaign prospects. The fight escalated after Buzzfeed published a series of memos written by a former British intelligence official that claimed Russia has compromising information about Trump.
Trump accused the U.S. government of pushing the document, which was in the possession of several media outlets.
“It was disgraceful disgraceful, that the intelligence agencies allowed any of the reports that turned out to be so false and so fake out,” he tweeted in mid January. “I think it’s a disgrace. And I say that and I say that. That’s something Nazi Germany would do and did do.”
McCain, who had provided a copy of the memos to the FBI for investigation, said it was “totally wrong” that the document was leaked.
“The fact that this un-validated document, to say the least, was leaked — it’s somebody’s responsibility,” he told Fox News.”The very fact that it was leaked, one, is a commentary on this town.”
