1. Watching the attack unfold on Jan 6, my first thought was that every foreign intelligence officer in one of the most surveilled cities on earth would be going out of their minds scooping up comms of members of Congress and the Executive branch who had joined the conspiracy.
2. Though unwarranted intercepts are illegal and can't be used in court when first obtained illegally by government actors, I know of few ways for keeping them out when we grab them from our adversaries who scooped them up in the first instance.
3. Knowing who our adversaries can blackmail was an urgent matter that had to be completed prior to directing law enforcement at the bad actors. My belief at the time why TFG tried to position one of his conspirators as NSA General Counsel was because that position is the
4. link between our military collection infrastructure and civilian law enforcement. Putting a traitor in that position would give our adversaries full access to our treasure and, had he been allowed to stay in place, we may have lost our republic.
5. There is a hierarchy in all this, and criminal prosecutions are frustratingly not at the top. Knowing who can corrupt our system and who they have already corrupted is near the highest priority.
6. The Rolling Stone article may be evidence that the material has filtered through the system and has arrived at a grand jury. The article doesn't really say how they got the information, but it would not be the first time that the government tickled the wire to get
7. a target say something incriminating on a court-ordered wire intercept, a text, email or perhaps just in a room with a window.
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