Rosenstein -vs- McCabe…
There are two warring camps: Team Rosenstein and Team McCabe.
Team Rosenstein consists of current officials: Jeff Sessions, Dana Boente et al;
and Team McCabe has former officials: Lisa Page, James Baker, Mike Kortan et al.
Each camp has a media outlet to push their narrative.
Team Rosenstein has The Washington Post;
Team McCabe is using The New York Times.
Sources for NYT reporting are from team McCabe;
Sources for WaPo reporting are from Team Rosenstein.
Understand this, and the reporting narrative context makes more sense.
Both Andrew McCabe and Rod Rosenstein took corrupt and illegal action to try and take down the President of the United States. However, generally speaking, McCabe’s actions were specifically intended to facilitate a soft-coup; whereas Rosenstein was more of a willingly facilitating useful idiot in the grand scheme.
Example 1: Former FBI Chief Legal Counsel James Baker and Former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe worked together to assemble the post-election “small group”, which eventually gained legitimate legal authority when Baker and McCabe convinced Rosenstein to hire Robert Mueller.
Baker and McCabe were intentionally manipulating the events; DAG Rosenstein was the patsy going along because he wasn’t inside the team in 2016 when it all began.
Example 2: Andrew McCabe and the “small group” assembled the third FISA-Title1 surveillance renewal on Carter Page on June 29th, 2017. This renewal extended the use of surveillance for Robert Mueller to exploit – for intelligence against the President. Rod Rosenstein signed the third renewal, based on their word, because the corrupt small group presented it to him. Again, likely Rosenstein was the useful idiot, the patsy.
The June 29th, FISA renewal was then used by the “small group” to dig into all of the communication within the Trump administration and anyone who was in contact with the subject of the surveillance warrant, Carter Page. This surveillance included congress. In protecting their interests, it was the surveillance that was most useful. The surveillance didn’t end until late October ’17 when the FISA expired.