Well, if it provides any assurance, **everyone**, and I mean everyone in DC - down to the lowliest office assistant - knew what was going on. I mean, if nothing else, Snowden laid it all out there for everyone to see.
So, in the long litany of players with full knowledge of exactly what was going on, I of course include Trump. Now, this is where GE is driven crazy, but how far fetched is it that a white hat conspiracy actually recruited Trump to defeat the deep state enemy?
Once you get into the realm of what we now know, and combine it with logical speculation about what then logically follows, then it isn't such a big leap to start seeing a very long range, big picture indeed.
Looks pretty unlikely, when the supposed good guys in your theory can't even hang on to the 5 most important months of texts between FBI agents, for example. See my new tagline for more clues.
The same way Obama and Hillary were recruited by the other side. At some abstract level, all presidents are "recruited" by others. The professional politicians form exploratory committees to find out how big and powerful their army will be.
I think Trump ran largely maybe mostly on his own initiative. I'm sure he had encouragement, and some of that may have been in the form of sharing a goal of reducing the corruption.
-- ... it isn't such a big leap to start seeing a very long range, big picture indeed. --
That's a fact, whether he was recruited in advance, or just "fell into it." No doubt he knows it is a dirty stinking swamp.