BREAKING NEWS: In 2017, Rod Rosenstein Secretly Blocked Bribery and Counterintelligence Inquiries Into Trump Business Dealings in Russia; Result of Rosenstein's Actions Was Mueller's Probe of a Hacking Conspiracy No One Had Alleged, and No Probe of a Course of Bribery Many Had https://twitter.com/nytmike/status/1300085848596262912

PS/ This ends the mystery of why Trump's obvious crimes and national security threats were never investigated properly—even as we waited years for a Mueller Report that only considered a hacking conspiracy no one had alleged against Trump. Upshot: the deck was stacked from Day 1.

PS2/ I spent years talking about Trump's bribery—and the counterintelligence threat posed by that bribery—and the fact that no investigation was forthcoming on it made me look like I was in left field. Now we know an investigation everyone thought should happen was being blocked.

PS3/ I can't tell you how angry this makes me. After Mueller failed to consider many of the real issues in the Trump-Russia case, month after month I thought to myself, I know this is the probe that's *supposed* to be happening, why isn't it? Now we know: one man was blocking it.

PS4/ Not only was Rosenstein blocking it, he'd blocked it in a way that deliberately created confusion within the FBI—and made it impossible for the proper bribery and counterintelligence investigations to occur. Rosenstein greenlit only an investigation he knew would go nowhere.

PS5/ I'm sorry, but I just have to state this plainly: so many of us were out here on social media and cable news and the BBC offering entirely correct analyses that were made to appear off the mark because of things that were secretly happening that no one knew about. I'm livid.

PS6/ I and others endured years of trolling, hitpieces, attacks and libel not because we weren't correct that Trump committed bribery and was a national security threat on the basis of his business interests—but because Rosenstein had blocked a probe the FBI thought should occur.

PS7/ It *really makes you wonder* about *other* things Trump critics were right about but were made to seem out in left field on—for instance the fact that it's 2020 and DOJ IG Michael Horowitz has yet to explain why it was OK for the FBI to leak to Rudy Giuliani in October 2016.

PS8/ Sometimes the questions are mocking, sometimes they're sincere, but it's been years of queries asking me "Whatever happened to [X], Seth?" The implication being that the analysis that [X] needed to happen and was happening was wrong. Turns out [X] was being secretly blocked.

PS9/ In a bizarre way it almost reestablishes my faith in the legal system—as it confirms my years of analyses of what was supposed to be happening in federal investigations of Trump, and confirms that certain things only didn't happen because of malfeasance by federal officials.

PS10/ Most important, of course, is the simple fact that America was denied the federal probe it was supposed to be getting—and that our national security and the rule of law demanded—because a Republican Trump appointee without a moral backbone stood in the breach to save Trump.

NOTE/ I understand people will snicker to see me say it, but today's breaking news underscores why the Proof series exists—and why it needed to exist. In the absence of the federal investigation that should have occurred, I wrote a trilogy of books that aimed to do the same work.

NOTE2/ "Career FBI CI investigators thought his ties posed such a national security threat they took the extraordinary step of opening an inquiry into them. Within days, ex-DAG Rosenstein curtailed the investigation without telling the FBI, all but ensuring it'd go nowhere."