Along with the far left and far right in the U.S., Russian President Vladimir Putin holds the pieties of liberal democracy in contempt. His nation’s attacks on American hearts and minds, detailed in the long-awaited Mueller report, carried with them the spirit of the Joker in the Batman myth — a malevolent court jester motivated by venality, contempt for pretense and a craving for relevance and thrills.

In the special counsel’s report, one member of WikiLeaks — the organization that framed, staged, timed and distributed Russian-hacked material to wreak maximum havoc on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign — described his feckless goals this way: