For those hoping that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation will take down President Trump, Monday brought reason to . . . keep on hoping.

The 12-count indictment of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his onetime business partner, Rick Gates, has nothing — literally nothing — to do with what Mueller is investigating: Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign.

Coming only a bit closer is the guilty plea by campaign aide George Papadopoulos for lying to the FBI.

The charges against Manafort and Gates sound sensational, with allegations of tens of millions paid them by pro-Russian Ukrainians, then allegedly used to fund a lavish lifestyle. But none of it touches Trump or his campaign.

And the charge sheet in the Papadopoulos plea raises a lot more questions than it answers. All that’s clear is that he was in touch with three people whom he believed had top Russian ties — and who kept promising a whole lot of things, including “dirt” on Hillary Clinton, which they never delivered.

We don’t even know if his contacts were who they said they were, or if Papadopoulos was taken for a ride.

But he kept unnamed campaign higher-ups in the loop on his activities. And no one tried to stop him — except to dump cold water on a supposed offer to set up a meeting between Trump and Vladimir Putin.

Which tells us what we already knew from the antics of Donald Trump Jr.: The campaign was eager to get whatever it could on Clinton, no matter who was offering it. But nothing in the plea promises anything remotely close to actual collusion with the Kremlin.

Papadopoulos is cooperating with Mueller, who’s trying to induce Manafort to do the same. But do they have anything to tell?

Democrats no doubt will play politics and start ramping up the impeachment talk again. But so far, there’s a lot less here than meets the eye.