For Sale: The Brooklyn Bridge
I find it improbable -- bordering on impossible -- that Department of Justice lawyers would get subpoenas for private information about members of Congress, staff and family without absolute authorization from their superiors -- not just because of procedure, thought that's good enough reasons, but at the very, very least if only to give themselves cover to protect themselves from firing, disbarment or prison.
While that could be Rod Rosenstein as Deputy Attorney General, who seems to be the only person high enough in the food chain high enough to authorize the subpoenas who was at the Justice Department during the entire timeframe of the story -- being "in place the entire time" isn't needed for this being done. It could have been several Attorneys General who did the authorizing. And further, I'm not even sure if "Deputy Attorney General" is high enough to authorize such subpoenas without wanting to cover himself, as well.
I've read suggested that there's also the issue of the gag order on Apple that had to be reauthorized every year, so Rosenstein could have been involved in that. But that's only a matter of "could have been" and it has nothing to do with who authorized the subpoenas in the first place, which is the main point of it all. For that matter, whoever reauthorized the gag order would almost certainly inform whoever was above them.
Ultimately, I don't think that this is about a one-person "who." I suspect that something this major and deep and high-level and reprehensible would have a lot of people signing off in order to give everyone that aforementioned, "Well, he approved it" cover.
I know that former Attorney General Barr and former Attorney General Sessions and Rod Rosenstein have all denied any knowledge of this. I also know that they're denials are not under oath. And I know, too, that William Barr has denied knowing the exact meaning of the word "suggest." And that he gave an official summary of the Mueller Report that was so profoundly inaccurate that a federal judge said everything she could under proper protocols without using the word "lie" and she ordered a full release of the material being questioned. So, William Barr denying anything borders on the meaningless. And the others have lost enough credibility that the burden is on them at this point to prove their denials.
Furthermore, I will add that I find it improbable -- bordering on impossible -- that even if remarkably none of them actually authorized the subpoenas that they all are somehow unaware of them. If so, it would be three years of utterly gross incompetence.
And in the end, the problem that they all face -- even if by some unlikely chance they're telling the truth and none authorized the subpoenas and none knew a single thing about them -- is that together they enabled Trump for four years which allowed this to happen, whoever approved it. Even if they aren't involved here, they are tied to Trump's actions. And are complicit in the deep level of corruption of the Trump years that protected, participated in and let fester.
And Republican Party silence on the matter speaks, as always, to the larger point. That this is about the Republican Party who enabled it all and continues to be complicit.
And anyone who thinks this story stops with these two House Democrats, and the staff and families mentioned, they haven't been paying attention to Trump and Republican World of the past four years.
But it doesn't even take "past four years." The past four months -- no, let's make it even easier -- the past four weeks will suffice.
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