Illustration by Tom Bachtell

Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating possible Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election, has lately been moving so fast that it is becoming difficult to keep track of the intricate levels of deception, and self-deception, described in the indictments that he brings. Last Thursday, Mueller charged Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, with a multimillion-dollar fraud related to, of all things, mortgages. The indictment also names Manafort’s associate Rick Gates, the former deputy campaign chair; both men had earlier been charged with laundering millions of dollars that they had collected as lobbyists for the government of Ukraine, and had said that they would fight the charges. By Friday, though, Gates had pleaded guilty to two counts: conspiracy with regard to the financial crimes, and lying to investigators—a lie that he had apparently told, recklessly enough, in prior plea talks—and prosecutors had unsealed a revised indictment, directed, this time, only at Manafort.

Just a few days earlier, a former attorney at the law firm Skadden Arps pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about conversations he had had with Gates regarding work that the firm did for Ukraine. The week before that, Mueller indicted thirteen Russian nationals on charges related to their involvement in the Internet Research Agency, a social-media mill, alleging that it used illegal means to promote Trump’s candidacy. Its efforts included buying ads on social media and digitally impersonating Trump supporters in Florida and “Blacktivists.” Michael Flynn, the President’s former national-security adviser, had already pleaded guilty to lying to investigators (he was also in legal jeopardy because of his work as an unregistered foreign lobbyist) and is now coöperating with the investigation. So is George Papadopoulos, a former campaign adviser, who pleaded guilty to lying about his foreign contacts.

None of the charges, so far, directly address whether the Trump campaign knowingly colluded with the Russians, or whether the President himself obstructed justice. The list of people who are coöperating, however, suggests that Mueller may be getting close on both points, particularly if Manafort joins them. As campaign chairman, he sat in on the now famous June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump, Jr., Jared Kushner, and a Russian lawyer who had offered “dirt” on the Clinton campaign. Manafort left the campaign two months later, but Gates stayed on through the election, and may therefore have much more to tell.

But, for all the talk of Kremlin puppetry and intelligence operations, the heart of the offenses that Mueller has laid out involves the normal aspects of American politics, particularly the opacity of campaign finance, and the startling sums involved. When Nate Silver, of FiveThirtyEight, looked at the issue of whether the Russian efforts had swung the election for Trump, he hesitated over the question of scale. According to the indictment, the Internet Research Agency had, at one point, budgeted $1.2 million a month, spread among a number of countries it was targeting. The reported spending by the Trump campaign and associated PACs was six hundred and seventeen million dollars; for the Clinton campaign and associated PACs, it was $1.2 billion.

And the Russian effort echoed themes that were already a factor in the election: the Internet Research Agency allegedly paid someone to dress up as Clinton in a prison uniform; the Trump campaign sold “Clinton for Prison” gear on its Web site, and American pacs have been paying for ads calling her a criminal since the time of her husband’s Administration. Which way did the influence run?

In some respects, though, there were more ways to hold the Russians accountable than their domestic competitors. It is illegal for foreign nationals, aside from green-card holders, to give money to or spend money on American electoral campaigns. That is why Mueller was able to charge the thirteen Russians with perpetrating a conspiracy to defraud the Federal Election Commission. Bob Bauer, who served as White House counsel under Barack Obama, noted, in a piece for JustSecurity.org, that the Supreme Court has upheld campaign-finance restrictions on foreigners because of the importance of citizenship in preserving “the basic conception of a political community.” Yet the Justices have been far more lax when it comes to corporate and independent-group spending. The 2010 decision in Citizens United, and in cases that followed, has yielded a glut of dark money.

As a result, we’ve come to expect that ads, even for candidates we like, will be paid for by groups with vague names that give no real clue as to who is behind them. Our curiosity has been numbed, even as our political imagination has been frazzled by the endless conspiracy theories that such organizations push. Specific measures to increase transparency, like better screening of advertisers by Facebook and Twitter’s recent purge of bots, might help. Larger measures, such as promoting digital literacy and civics education, take time. But, while social media and bots are the engine, money is the fuel, and there isn’t likely to be a real solution to that without comprehensive campaign-finance reform. The crassness of the dealings documented in the Mueller indictments reflects a political culture in which foreign countries, as well as Americans, routinely pay millions to influence politicians, whether through lobbying firms or PACs. Meanwhile, it wouldn’t be surprising if, in the 2020 election, some super PACs referred to the Mueller indictment as a guide for using social media to organize fake grassroots initiatives.

Another observation one can make, reading the indictments, is that Trump has not surrounded himself with the best people. The bots are not the only ones who come across as preposterous impostors. How did Manafort manage to pass himself off as the adult in the room in a major party’s Presidential campaign? How did Gates hang on in Trump’s orbit, even after Manafort was pushed out? How was Papadopoulos given a seat at high-level meetings? How was Flynn seen as a prudent adviser on matters of national security? Then, there is Trump himself. But he is a distinctly American problem. Dealing with the Russians may be the easy part. ♦