Step one, remove thorn from Trump’s side.
Keith Schiller, President Donald Trump's pugnacious former bodyguard who now sits sentry outside the Oval Office doors, was at the law enforcement agency armed with a bombshell message from his longtime boss to FBI Director James Comey: "You are hereby terminated and removed from office."
Then, with Comey neatly cut from the loop, make a not-so-subtle change in the priorities of the agency he was operating.
Meanwhile, the White House and Sessions have pushed the FBI to pursue leaks of classified information to the media, according to one Justice Department official, urging the agency to prioritize the probe over other matters, including the investigation into Russian election meddling.
For months, every hearing in the House or Senate has been sidelined by Republicans determined to distract from the main issue by asking about leaks or “unmasking.” Donald Trump already blocked weeks of progress by throwing the whole investigation off course with accusations of “wiretapps” from Barack Obama, and congressional Republicans piled on in removing Vladimir Putin from the center of their efforts and inserting Susan Rice. Devin Nunes even managed to completely derail the House investigation through claims of unmasking that proved to have zero validity.
Well, there won’t be a problem with that any more. Because now the Russia investigation is the sideline. Leakers are officially job number one.
It’s easy to understand why the Trump regime, and Jefferson Sessions III in particular, would put leakers first on their most wanted list. After all, Sessions wouldn’t have “recused” himself from the Russia investigation had it not come out that he had two meetings with Russian officials that he failed to report. The public learned about those meetings not because Sessions finally let everyone know. They learned by leaks.
Without leakers, it’s very likely that Michael Flynn would still be sitting in the national security advisor chair, as despite two meetings with Sally Yates, Trump failed to remove Flynn until the story of his meetings with Russian officials appeared in the Washington Post.
All day, Trump surrogates have been visiting news media, assuring everyone that—though of course the Russia investigation is a waste of time—the investigation is continuing just as it did before Comey was canned. Except it’s not. It’s been demoted to some unknown distance below catching the people who let slip to the public the connections Trump is covering up.
One Justice official suggested there could be more changes coming at the FBI beyond Comey's removal.
"There is a lot of cleaning house that needs to be done," one official said
It’s a good bet that no evidence will be found linking Trump to Russia. Because finding evidence first requires someone to look.