Just one week ago, Mueller submitted a memorandum stipulating that "a Special Counsel may conclude that investigating otherwise unrelated allegations against a central witness in the matter is necessary to obtain cooperation."
My speculative theory is Rosenstein kicked this up to SDNY to insulate Mueller from the Trump backlash he knew it would provoke.
The conservative freakout about this raid amounts to the argument that when federal investigators find evidence people in Trump’s inner circle committed crimes, they should just decline to investigate. For Trump’s friends, everything, for everyone else, the law.
DOJ regs say Mueller has the authority to investigate Cohen for unrelated crimes. Mueller found evidence of such crimes and took them to Rosenstein, who referred them to a US Attorney in NY. Alternative would’ve been to just bury the evidence. That is the conservative position.
