More Shuffling at Justice

For John, BLUF:  If you don't examine news reports you are possibly being played.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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No. 3 Official at the Justice Department Is Stepping Down

From The Old Gray Lady, by Reporter Katie Benner, 9 February 2018.

Here is the lede plus two:

Rachel L. Brand, the No. 3 official at the Justice Department, plans to step down after nine months on the job as the country’s top law enforcement agency has been under attack by President Trump, according to two people briefed on her decision.

Ms. Brand’s profile had risen in part because she is next in the line of succession behind the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, who is overseeing the special counsel’s inquiry into Russian influence in the 2016 election.  Mr. Trump, who has called the investigation a witch hunt, has considered firing Mr. Rosenstein.

Such a move could have put her in charge of the special counsel and, by extension, left her in the cross hairs of the president.

The President has considered firing Mr Rosenstein?  The President has probably considered firing everyone, including Reporter Katie Banner and NYT Publisher A. G. Sulzberger.  It is the age of hypertext.  Where is the link to the story to shows definitively that the President was considering firing Mr Rosenstein?  Is this just sloppy work or it is speculation posing as journalism?

The story reports that Ms Brand is moving on to be the top lawyer for Walmart, their Director of Global Governance.  I wonder about this.  Maybe Mr Sam Walton is running a false flag operation for Mr Trump, drawing Ms Brand away from DOJ.

By the way, the last paragraph raises more questions than it answers:

Ms. Brand’s assistant, Currie Gunn, has also left the department.  Ms. Gunn could not be reached for comment.

Unless, of course, this transition in Ms Brand's life is fairly long planned and this is all just normal transitions.

Here is the next to the last paragraph:

But Ms. Brand has also become embroiled in the feud between the president and the nation’s law enforcement agencies.  Reports that Mr. Trump had tried to fire Mr. Mueller and had considered firing Mr. Rosenstein raised questions of who would replace Mr. Rosenstein.

This is the penultimate paragraph.  At last a Link to an article that includes a paragraph on the assertion that the President considered firing Mr Rosenstein.

More important, in what day did Ms Brand "become embroiled"?&nbswp; Another equation with the solution left for the reader.

I am not aure I am any smarter now than when I started reading the headline.

Regards  —  Cliff