Yes, the rule change had a convenient side benefit for Obama against Trump but that wasn’t the original intent. If you go wading into unfriendly liberal territory with your original statement “This was only done to be able to use those conversations to discredit Trump, not for some other laudable purpose” you’re going to get chopped off at the knees because A) it wasn’t only done to discredit Trump and B) there was in fact some other laudable purpose.
Like I wrote before, I don't care what the "original" intent was and whether it was "laudable" or not.
That is the very definition of unintended consequences that liberals encounter every time they try to do something, as in, "Well, our original intentions were laudable in creating ObamaCare but somehow, unforeseen by us liberals, it turned into a pile of crap."
I'd quit defending the etiology of this program. Passing around of raw, unsourced or unvetted intelligence data has caused a mess in the intelligence services and the leaks to the media are flowing like water through a sieve.
Unintended consequences of a not well thought out policy....