ratcliffja
Member
Maybe, but that would be a whole lot of effort for a story that got comparatively little attention. Few people knew about Smith before last week, and few people know about him now.
It's possible that they didn't know how much info was found. They were covering their butts just in case. It's also a preemptive defense for whatever Mueller finds. Unless there's something more substantial than assuming that the collusion defense was for something specific that hasn't yet dropped, I'm going to assume that's not the case.