https://bigleaguepolitics.com/heres-jeff-sessions-might-playing-4-d-chess/ 'From the first moments in the administration, Jeff Sessions knew what he had in Horowitz. It’s not clear exactly when the plan came to Sessions, but clearly it was before his recusal. Both Trump and Sessions after the election had been shocked to see the level of hostility by the left to a duly constituted American election. Sessions personally found people he formerly though of as friends in the Senate accusing him of the most vile attitudes. He was painted as the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan—an organization he had crushed as Attorney General in Alabama. Trump had already told Rush Limbaugh he was shocked at the level of vitriol that remained by January, but had now understood it would not evaporate quickly. If it took Sessions any longer, it’s doubtful once his confirmation hearings concluded that he was under any illusions as to the enemy he faced.
Certainly such a foe would not permit a legitimate investigation of the past administration’s crimes by the Attorney General of the new administration. Yet investigated they must be. There was too much rampant criminality on display: the Clinton e-mails, the U1 scandal, the Clinton Foundation’s “pay for play” structure; the reports—as yet unproven—of “Deep State” resistance to the administration within the FBI and the Department of Justice. Sessions could not ignore these illegalities. At the same time, politically he could not prosecute him. He, not the real culprits, would become the object of the opposition’s legal, legislative, and propaganda efforts.
In short, Sessions could not personally lead the attack on the Swamp, nor could he ignore the criminality. He needed to be seen as doing nothing—prosecuting the “dark web,” or Medicare fraud, or MS-13—while someone else did the heavy lifting. His solution was elegant in design, brilliant in conception. If he could not investigate, he certainly would be obligated to follow through on demands from other legitimate sources—the Inspector General or Congress—who discovered criminal behavior and demanded action. Much of this was handled by his #2, Rod Rosenstein, who quietly in mid 2017 initiated separate investigations of the U1 scandal and Hillary’s e-mails. Rosenstein also picked up and continued an ongoing FBI investigation of the Clinton Family Foundation, supporting it with offices in Los Angeles, New York, D.C., and Little Rock.
Throughout 2017, Sessions cleverly and effectively maintained the illusion of doing nothing when it came to bringing cases against the prime elements of the Deep State. At the same time, the Special Counsel Robert Mueller was—in some eyes—running rampant, issuing indictments for Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort. The dichotomy was more than many conservatives could take: here was Flynn, a highly decorated soldier, pleading guilty to a lie that even the FBI investigators at the time concluded was not a lie, while people such as Tony Podesta, Andrew McCabe, and others not only walked free but seemed to prosper.'
