There appears to be a belief by Barr / DOJ that you have to have ALL the evidence on EVERYBODY
before you go public. The early timing of charges against Clinesmith seem to have been precipitated
by Brian Cates releasing his info. Durham was probably not originally planning to go public on
Clinesmith until he had got everything tied up. My view is that it is not necessary to have every
piece of the jigsaw in place before charging those people, who a GJ has decided, have very
clearly committed crimes. There is some "optics" benefit in showing the public early on that
this was a co-ordinated conspiracy involving corruption in several Government Departments .
The early Clinesmith indictment certainly has not done any harm in terms of "optics".