Nor is there any mention of Donald Trump Jr.’s infamous June 2016 meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, which he arranged with the expectation of receiving damaging information about Clinton. “There are a number of different pieces out there that we still don’t know about,” Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor in Chicago, told me. “What would be more interesting is down the line, will Mueller be able to develop evidence that there were individuals in the United States who knew of the Russia operation and tried to help make it succeed? “There’s nothing in there that suggests that there was. But the silence of the indictment . . . It doesn't mean anything other than he’s not charging them now.”

While it is unlikely that the 13 Russians will ever see the inside of a courtroom in the U.S., Jeffress argues that the charges send a strong message. “An indictment like this has an important law enforcement purpose because it deters people from doing the same thing in future elections. So I think that is very important and important that it be done well in advance of the next political campaign,” he told me. “I think if you are a Russian citizen who was asked to engage in this kind of activity, knowing that other people had been indicted for it and if you did it and the U.S. found out you would never be able travel internationally again, that is a real deterrent.”

There is the possibility that the charges will encourage cooperation from individuals in the U.S., as well. “What matters here is not so much what happens in the court case, but the effect it has on others,” Mariotti told me. “Does this move cause people who knew something about the influence operation to come forward? Does it make it so that people who are under Mueller's nose, in his gaze, make them more likely to cooperate? We just don't know. I don’t know if we have enough information to know those things. But from a legal, purely legal perspective, which is what my expertise is, those are the sort of questions that I would be thinking about.”

Mueller has already brought criminal charges against four members of the Trump campaign: Former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, his deputy and longtime business associate Rick Gates, former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn and George Papadopoulos, who served as a foreign policy adviser to Trump. On Sunday, The Los Angeles Times reported that Gates, who previously pleaded not guilty alongside Manafort, is changing his plea and plans to testify against his alleged co-conspirator. Papadopoulos and Flynn have already been cooperating with Mueller’s team. If Gates can help Mueller make the charges against Manafort stick, it is entirely possible that Manafort might flip, too.

It is hard to predict what to expect next from Mueller. At every turn, the special prosecutor has managed to keep his chess game secret—no easy feat in a town where practically everything else has leaked to the press. But there is a consensus that something more is coming. “It is hard to speculate on what is next,” Jeffress told me. “But I would say that if [Mueller] has been able to uncover that same kind of evidence on the hacking that he has been able to uncover on these campaign-type activities then we’ve got another shoe to drop.”