Originally Posted by bronco67

If you think about it...there was no need for these Russian operatives to be in direct contact with the Trump campaign. If there was any collusion with Americans, it would have been indirectly through their handlers in Russia -- who would be the ones who communicated with the Trump campaign. So any American could have plausible deniability if one of the trolls got nabbed by the feds.

Mueller is playing chess against checker players. This move may not look significant, but there's a reason this was done at this time. Some groundwork is being laid by the probe team.

So maybe these guys will never be tried in the US for any crimes...but at least we know they won't be back in the United States to sow havoc in our gullible society. These aren't just any guys off the Moscow streets. It takes lots of time and resources to cultivate operatives capable of doing what these agents did, and now they're pretty much useless to Russia for the 2018 mid terms. I doubt they have a giant stable of agents trained to do this specific task just sitting around waiting to be deployed.

Another benefit is now that Trump feels exonerated by this news, he'll stop trying to pick off Justice department and FBI officials he feels are standing in his way of derailing the probe.