The special counsel’s team has uncovered a vast organizational operation that the Russians started building in 2014, and accelerated with a budget of over $1.25 million monthly during the 2016 election. The Russians did not just go after Hillary Clinton in the general election. They also undertook efforts primarily intended “to denigrate other candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio,” according to the indictment. If it wasn’t clear before today: The threat to our country includes Russia’s attempts to sow discord among Americans in general, and to shape the Republican primaries. We all stand to lose by being robbed of our democratic choices.

Trying to get beyond partisan politics, it was a wise move to have Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, a Republican, publicly announce the indictments by Mr. Mueller, a Republican, for Russian activities not only to hurt Hillary Clinton but also Republican candidates for president. It was also a good symbol to elevate the public’s understanding of the seriousness of Mr. Rosenstein’s charge and why he has such great confidence in Mr. Mueller.

And yet Friday’s indictments cover just one part of the multiheaded Russian operation. They detail the Russians’ use of social media platforms to shape preferences and to engineer political rallies. A separate F.B.I. team is investigating Russian agents for hacking the Democratic National Committee during the election. Mr. Mueller is reportedly keenly interested in Russian agents’ offering “dirt” on Mrs. Clinton to campaign associates of Mr. Trump. And then there’s still the issue of Russian collaboration with WikiLeaks. As with his previous indictments, Mr. Mueller kept the rest of his hand closely guarded.

It is the case that this round of indictments may help build a future case for any Americans who aided and abetted or conspired with the Russians in any of the Kremlin’s different operations to interfere in the election. Mr. Mueller obviously now appears to have not just intelligence information but also sufficient evidence for a criminal trial. And he has that evidence to prove a Russian conspiracy in “impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of the government through fraud and deceit for the purpose of interfering with the U.S. political and electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016.” That’s a mouthful, but it captures the scope of the criminal case.

The indictment tells us that some Trump campaign associates, especially at the grass-roots level, cooperated with the Russians “unwittingly.” That makes sense. As Mr. Rosenstein explained, in answer to a reporter’s question, these parts of the operation depended on Russians’ disguising their identities and duping innocent Americans. According to Mr. Mueller’s other criminal court documents, that was certainly not the case when it came to Russian overtures to more senior levels of the Trump campaign, for example, in offering dirt on Mrs. Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.”