Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein must still be worried about keeping his job. In his bizarre speech Thursday, the one where he maybe inadvertently told the world it doesn't even know how hard Russia has worked to "undermine America," he made very sure to toe the Trump line: It is all President Obama's fault.
"Some critical decisions about that Russia investigation were made before I got there," he said in the speech at the Armenian Bar Association's Public Servants Dinner. "The previous administration chose not to publicize the full story about Russian computer hackers and social media trolls, and how they relate to Russia's broader strategy to undermine America." All right, for the umpteenth time, let's just tell the whole story.
The Obama intelligence team, including CIA chief John Brennan, had a plan for informing the public on the full extent of the information they had on Russia's election subversion efforts. They took it to the congressional Gang of Eight, the leadership of both chambers and the chairs and ranking members of the intelligence committees. They had a strong, bipartisan statement ready to go, and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell single-handedly vetoed it. He was the lone holdout among the eight lawmakers, refusing to sign on. Beyond that, he threatened to make the election even more toxic, saying that he would tell the nation that Obama was lying about Russia's involvement on behalf of Trump and trying to fix the election for Hillary Clinton.
There's no question McConnell would have done it—that's exactly who he is. Obama's team, like most of the rest of the country, figured that Clinton was going to win and gave into the extortion. It's impossible to know what the outcome would have been if he'd done otherwise, but we know enough about the traditional media's Clinton Derangement Syndrome and irrational hatred of her to know that Obama couldn't count on a fair hearing there.
But this is the story Republicans from Trump on down are going to be telling. Whether or not the traditional media is up to the task of putting the onus on McConnell to defend his actions remains to be seen. But I'm not holding my breath.