Okie, I like door number 2 - a malignant intent to undermine the President's position from the very outset.
Your characterization of this as a silent-coup is essentially correct. It's just one facet of an internal "civil war" and slow-motion coup which has been ongoing for years among powerful competing interests in our governing classes (this includes elected officials, the bureaucracy, the Judiciary, the MSM, and of course the political parties). Basically this was another variation of the same "Iron Triangle" consisting of the intelligence community, the MSM and the DNC co-operating to bring down an administration that we saw in action in the fall of Richard Nixon.