Before he was the target of Trump's tweets, Andrew McCabe headed a task force on international crime

Donald Trump displays plenty of madness, but at least occasionally there is also some method. As the Atlantic points out, when it comes to Trump’s concentrated effort to clear out threats at the FBI and DOJ, the one thing the targets of his tweets have in common is a particular set of skills. Not for tracking down missing relatives. For unraveling plots by Russian mobsters.

Trump’s daily attacks on Bruce Ohr may play against the idea that Ohr was friendly with Christopher Steele. But there’s a reason why the Justice Department official and the former British intelligence agent were in contact, and it has nothing to do with Hillary Clinton or Fusion GPS. It’s because both were experts on Russian organized crime. Ohr was directly involved in a case against Paul Manafort’s boss and benefactor, oligarch Oleg Deripaska.

Before Ohr moved into the center of Trump’s crosshairs, there was a focus on former deputy director of the FBI Andrew McCabe. By utterly no coincidence, McCabe had more than a decade of experience in going after crime syndicates centered in Russia. Before moving into the deputy role, McCabe supervised the team of agents focused on that area.

Lisa Page — the “lovely” Lisa Page in the many tweets Trump has issued playing up the relationship between the Justice Department lawyer and former FBI agent Peter Strzok — is also an expert on the Russian mafia with a particular history dealing with money laundering. And Strzok was a Russian counterintelligence expert.

It’s only natural that in an investigation centering on crime related to Russia, the law enforcement cast would include a lot of experts on … crime related to Russia. But Trump seems to be unerringly picking out those with experience in getting to the bottom of these schemes, an in particular the kind of money-laundering of which Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort was accused.

Donald Trump may be shouting “no collusion,” at every opportunity, but the special counsel’s office has already demonstrated that it will go after cases involving money laundering for the Russian mob … and that’s an area where Trump has a lot to fear.