If we’ve learned anything about Robert Mueller over the past year, it’s that he periodically likes to strategically feed details to the press to steer them in the right direction and lay the groundwork for his next move. If we’ve learned anything about Carl Bernstein over the past forty years, it’s that he doesn’t make things up. Bernstein now says he’s heard from people with knowledge of the draft version of Mueller’s report, and it’s devastating for Donald Trump. So where does this get us?

First, it’s not difficult to figure out that Mueller wanted this information out there at this particular time. Does anyone really think that Mueller’s own people would blab to Bernstein about the report on Trump, unless Mueller wanted it to happen? Mueller chose a reporter with Watergate credentials because everyone would know it was true. What’s most instructive here is what Mueller did, and did not, give to Bernstein.

Bernstein said on-air on CNN yesterday that Trump “has helped Putin destabilize the United States and interfere in the election, no matter whether it was purposeful or not.” What’s interesting here is that Mueller has fed this to Bernstein in the form of a question: did Trump do Putin’s bidding, but did he do it wittingly? Mueller knows the answer, of course. And you don’t float a question like this ahead of your report unless you’re about to provide evidence that the answer is “yes.”

It’s bad enough for Donald Trump that Robert Mueller’s report is going to expose him as Putin’s puppet. It’s even worse for Trump that Mueller is apparently laying the groundwork to expose him as a willing puppet. Keep in mind that this comes immediately after the leak about the FBI’s counterintelligence probe into Trump, and the leak about Trump hiding his private discussions with Putin from his own staff. We think Mueller is steadily laying the groundwork to expose Trump as a traitor. At the rate this is going, it shouldn’t be much longer before Mueller officially drops the hammer.