1. Was today's #Rosenstein affair part of a carefully planned Russian intel operation assisted by treasonous @whitehouse staff and @nytimes reporters? @FBIWFO @NSAGov. Here's my view.
2. First, I track the sealed dockets in DC. There are a lot. I haven't checked the inventory but I'm guessing there are still a lot. They're not all 2016 Russian attack related but I'm betting some are. And once unsealed Trump can't dismiss them. Only the Art. III judges can
3. Second, IMO DC is the most surveilled city in the world. Foreign intelligence services work out of every embassy and the Russians are active and aggressive. So it would be hard to imagine that Russians SVR and GRU aren't watching court, its filings and the grand jury.
4.Third, Trump is dirty. My posts go back a long way. He's a full blown Russian mob useful idiot and made his income as a mob money launderer. He knows it. Putin knows it and now Mueller knows it.
5. Fourth, there is no reason to delay indicting the Trump conspirators ahead of the midterms. In fact, a good argument can be made that doing that would be wrong. We have a right to know our government is run by treasonous conspirators. No DOJ memo overrules our right to know.
6. Fifth, Trump and therefore the Russians know the grand jury is ready to indict. They are getting the witness debriefs. Bob Goldstone is the poster boy for "Indictments are coming soon."
7. So they need to act to stop Mueller. They know the first person they need to remove is Rosenstein but they also know that the Mueller team and national security DOJ folks are ready to move if Trump does. What they needed to know is "What's the contingency plan?"
8. We would find it shocking to learn that our NSA was listing to the DOJ coms and spying on emails and texts but would anyone doubt that Putin would do it? He doesn't need to decrypt it if he knows how it will be sent and by whom. I won't go into detail about how the cases
9. could be unsealed but they will want to know who is involved and how they tee it up. So this may have simply been a test. Like flying a Bear Bomber into our airspace to see how we react. Don't under estimate Trump's betrayal or the degree to which Putin owns him.
