The massive direct favors and bribes where to Ted Stevens, not McCain.
As for McCain and Keating
Glenn and McCain: cleared of impropriety but criticized for poor judgment
The Senate Ethics Committee ruled that the involvement of Glenn in the scheme was minimal, and the charges against him were dropped.[32] He was only criticized by the Committee for "poor judgment."[34]
The Ethics Committee ruled that the involvement of McCain in the scheme was also minimal, and he too was cleared of all charges against him.[33][32] McCain was criticized by the Committee for exercising "poor judgment" when he met with the federal regulators on Keating's behalf.[7] The report also said that McCain's "actions were not improper nor attended with gross negligence and did not reach the level of requiring institutional action against him....Senator McCain has violated no law of the United States or specific Rule of the United States Senate."[35] On his Keating Five experience, McCain has said: "The appearance of it was wrong. It's a wrong appearance when a group of senators appear in a meeting with a group of regulators, because it conveys the impression of undue and improper influence. And it was the wrong thing to do."[7]
After McCain became a leading Republican contender for the U.S. presidency in the 2000s several retrospective accounts of the controversy contended that McCain was included in the investigation primarily so that there would be at least one Republican target.[36][37][38][14] Glenn's inclusion in the investigation has been attributed to Republicans who were angered by the inclusion of McCain, as well as committee members who thought that dropping Glenn (and McCain) would make it look bad for the remaining three Democratic Senators.[36][38] Robert S. Bennett, who was the special investigator during the scandal, suggested to the Senate Ethics Committee that it pursue charges against neither McCain nor Glenn, saying of McCain, "that there was no evidence against him."[37] The Vice Chairman of the Ethics Committee, Senator Warren Rudman of New Hampshire, agreed with Bennett, but the Chairman, Senator Howell Heflin of Alabama, did not agree.[14]
Regardless of the level of their involvement, both senators were greatly affected by it. McCain would write in 2002 that attending the two April 1987 meetings was "the worst mistake of my life".[39] Glenn has described the Senate Ethics Committee investigation as the low point of his life.[8]
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