Someone - or a group of someones - at a senior level in the administration suspects a complete meltdown is coming soon - scandals galore. Enough that even the deplorabase will walk away in sufficient numbers to make trump's stranglehold on the party irrelevant. Resignations, indictments, guilty pleas, possible impeachment - all manner of chaos.

The op-ed will allow them all to claim they were part of the shadow resistance, and are therefore American heroes, not collaborators. It's a get out of jail free card.

I think it's really that simple.