Today’s Rod Rosenstein press conference really was about Trump-Russia, but everyone missed it
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein stepped before the cameras today for what the Department of Justice had billed as a “major” cyber law enforcement announcement. Sure enough, it was big enough to involve leaders from the FBI, Treasury Department, and U.S. Attorney’s office. The fact that it was being led by Rosenstein meant that it had to be about the Trump-Russia investigation. And yet all he ended up announcing was that nine Iranians had been indicted for hacking the United States at the instruction of the government of Iran. So what happened here?
Here’s the key to understanding the whole thing. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is a glory hog who would never have passed up the opportunity to announce something this big. Sessions is also a racist who would never have passed up the chance to take credit for legal action against nonwhite people. There is simply no way on earth that Sessions would have passed this press conference off to his Deputy Rod Rosenstein unless he wasn’t given a choice. And there’s only one logical reason why Rosenstein would – or even could – have taken it away from him.
In other words, today’s event had to have been related to the Trump-Russia scandal. Precisely how? That’s the part we don’t know yet. Perhaps the Iranian government was taking instructions from the Russian government. Perhaps one of the indicted Iranians has already cut a plea deal to flip on the Russians. But one way or the other, Jeff Sessions would have been at that podium today if this announcement hadn’t been tacitly related to Trump-Russia.
While we’re at it, let’s dispense with the notion being spread by optimists in Donald Trump’s base and pessimists in the Resistance that this was somehow a gift to incoming National Security Adviser John Bolton. It’s true that Bolton is a warmonger who hates Iran. But even if Rod Rosenstein were suddenly willing to help Trump start a war, which he’s not, he couldn’t have cooked up a major investigation, a grand jury, and today’s indictments in the time since Bolton came into the picture. This has something to do with Trump-Russia, and nothing to do with John Bolton.
