Rod Rosenstein holding major Trump-Russia press conference
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is reportedly holding a press conference on Friday morning to make what he’s characterizing as a “major” announcement regarding cyber law enforcement. It’s so major that he’ll have people from the FBI, Treasury Department, and U.S. Attorney’s office with him during the event. He’s provided few clues about what he’s announcing, but it’s not difficult to figure out how this ties to Donald Trump’s Russia scandal.
Rosenstein is billing this as a “major cyber law enforcement announcement” which essentially means that the Feds have busted hackers. The involvement of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York suggests that at least one of the culprits was operating out of New York City. The involvement of the Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence gives away that this is some kind of international financial crime involving hackers. The fact that Rosenstein is holding this press conference, and not his boss Jeff Sessions, who is recused from Trump-Russia, all but gives away that this is about Trump-Russia.
We’ve seen this script before. Rosenstein held a press conference last month to announce that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had obtained grand jury indictments against thirteen Russian nationals and three Russian entities who had conspired to alter the outcome of the 2016 election in Donald Trump’s favor. In an interesting development, WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange tweeted that he believes the indictments of “state backed hackers” will be announced tomorrow. Assange can never be taken at his word, but he appears to believe that the targets are the Russian government hackers who stole DNC emails and fed them to WikiLeaks.
Robert Mueller has already indicted at least nineteen people in the Trump-Russia scandal, and he has one or more ongoing grand juries in relation to the scandal. Whatever is coming at 10am eastern time on Friday, Rod Rosenstein thinks it’s major. We know this because he just used that word in his media advisory, which has been posted by Politico reporter Eric Weller (link) and MSNBC contributor MSNBC Joyce Alene (link) among others, and now confirmed by the DOJ itself on Twitter.
