On a second read, this absolutely reeks of a strategic leak. Two sources say Durham’s review has spawned a criminal inquiry, but not when it happened or what the crime is. That’s awfully suggestive. nytimes.com/2019/10/24/us/…
Why are two officials telling reporters there’s a criminal inquiry, but not when or about what? Why that one tidbit of information, but no more? If this were a recent development, wouldn’t you at least say that?
So here’s my bet: This has been an absolutely abysmal news week for the administration. They very much want to shift the media narrative back in a more favorable direction. One option: Leak just enough information about an old & peripheral development to imply a bombshell.
It would, for instance, be pretty unsurprising if the review had, long ago, spawned a criminal probe of some of the clearly unlawful leaks related to the investigation. It’d be more surprising if it hadn’t, really. Worth reporting, but not exactly front page material.
But leak one little breadcrumb with no context, leaving the natural implication that this is a new development, and you’ve got fodder for a speculative feeding frenzy that the Deep State Coup is about to come crashing down.
Ideally, from their perspective, enough of a feeding frenzy to dislodge damaging information coming out of the impeachment depositions from the “lead story” slot.
Obviously that’s all speculative, but it’s the only plausible motivation that I can think of for leaking JUST this one sliver of information to the NYT at this particular moment, with not even a hint of the “what” or the “when”.
Possibly a failure of imagination on my part, but for every other set of underlying facts, sources, and motives I can think of, you’d either leak something more or nothing at all.
The NYT reporters do at least lampshade the odd specificity of what sources were willing to confirm: "It was not clear what potential crime Mr. Durham is investigating, nor when the criminal investigation was prompted."
TL;DR: This smells like a page 8 that someone wants to make a page 1 for short term tactical reasons. A real page 1, the incentive for anyone with knowledge is either “don’t talk to press at all” or “talk more.” But that’s a guess and we’ll see soon enough.
This seems consistent with my hypothesis….
