Was the courier a staff member of congress or an employee of McCain’s foundation?
Who paid for the flight?
Someone paid an expense claim.
Who paid for the flight?
Someone paid an expense claim.
According to a Vanity Fair article last April, while attending the Halifax International Security Forum last November, McCain and David J. Kramer, a former State Department official specializing in Russia, learned of the dossier from Sir Andrew Wood, a former British ambassador to Russia. Sir Andrew said, "We spoke about how Mr. Trump may find himself in a position where there could be an attempt to blackmail him with kompromat." Kramer, who then worked at the McCain Institute for International Leadersip, volunteered to go and retrieve the kompromat in question.
From the article:
On an evening about a week later, using a ticket purchased with miles from his own account, Kramer flew out of Washington and landed early the next morning at Heathrow. Once on the ground, as per stern instructions, he operated on Moscow Rules. Told to meet a man loitering outside baggage claim holding a copy of the Financial Times, Kramer engaged in an exchange of word code. At last satisfied, Christopher Steele whisked him off in a Land Rover to the security of his house in Surrey.They talked for hours. And Steele passed him his report. Was this the identical, somewhat sputtering 35-page memo that had already been making the rounds among reporters? Or, as some intelligence analysts believe, was it a longer, more expertly crafted and sourced document, the final work product of a well-trained M.I.6 senior deskman? Neither McCain nor Kramer would comment, but what is known is that Kramer flew back to Washington that same night, guarding his hard-won prize with his life.
On December 9, McCain sat in the office of F.B.I. director James Comey and, with no other aides present, handed him the typed pages that could bring about the downfall of a president. Afterward, the senator would issue a statement that amounted to little more than a hapless shrug, and a disingenuous one to boot: he had been “unable to make a judgment about their accuracy” and so he’d simply passed them on.
So, I guess the answer is, the courier used his miles. Of course, he does (or did) work for the McCain Institute. Among the Institute's funders is hedge fund billionaire and Bannon nemesis Paul Singer.