Collusion, according to the world’s finest dictionaries, is defined as “secret or illegal cooperation or conspiracy in order to deceive others”.

There are many ways to describe the reason an FBI swat team raided a home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, before sunrise on Friday.

But there’s only one realistic definition of the conduct outlined in such entertaining length in the grand jury’s indictment known as the United States of America versus Roger Jason Stone Jr.

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In addition to several counts of obstructing congressional investigations, lying to Congress, and witness tampering, special counsel Robert Mueller details a pretty straightforward story about Stone’s activities. Clue: it rhymes with delusion.

Collusion may or may not be a crime, as Rudy Giuliani (speaking on behalf of one Donald Trump) has often pointed out. But then again, Giuliani may or may not be a competent lawyer, given his astonishingly shabby record in fact-free musings that he later has to retract.

It seems churlish to point out to Trump, Giuliani et al that Mueller has already indicted several Russian persons in a conspiracy to interfere with the 2016 presidential election by hacking into the Democratic National Committee’s emails, as well as those of the chairman of the Clinton campaign.

Churlish because Mueller’s follow-up on Friday presented evidence of how the Trump campaign, through Roger Stone, was involved in the secret coordination of the release of those emails.

Stone – himself the longest-serving of Trump’s political advisers – reported to Trump campaign officials on the impending and frequent email dumps from WikiLeaks, otherwise known in the indictment as “Organization 1”.

Roger Stone says he won't testify against Trump after Mueller indictment Read more

As the Mueller team explained: “Shortly after Organization 1’s release, an associate of the high-ranking Trump Campaign official sent a text message to STONE that read ‘well done.’”

Like Trump’s favorite steaks, Stone himself is now well and truly done. He appears to have lied to Congress about those contacts with the Trump campaign. And he botched his efforts to cover up the conspiracy by apparently asking his co-conspirators to lie for him.

When one of them refused, Stone started acting out his wildest mob movie fantasies, urging him to lie to Congress by doing a “Frank Pentangeli” from The Godfather: Part II. At least Stone dreamed he was starring in the best of the Godfather series.

When not attempting to direct scenes in mob movies, Stone was writing a miserably low-grade pastiche of the movie script. “You are a rat. A stoolie,” he wrote in so many garbled phrases to his naturally incredulous friend, a part-time comedian, part-time candidate called Randy Credico. “You backstab your friends – run your mouth my lawyers are dying Rip you to shreds.” He threatened to hurt Credico’s pet dog and told him to “Prepare to die [expletive].”

Instead of preparing to die, Stone’s former friend told him “you’ve opened yourself up to perjury charges like an idiot.” There’s nothing more churlish than pointing out to someone that they are not in fact Marlon Brando or Robert De Niro, but rather Peter Sellers or Rowan Atkinson.

Credico also took his pet dog Bianca to his grand jury testimony, which is a scene that somehow didn’t make it to the final cut of The Godfather: Part II.

Faced with such cartoonish buffoonery, the response from the Trump White House was implausibly vacuous. Even for a White House that regularly sets new Olympic records in implausible vacuity.

“This doesn’t have anything to do with the president,” said the press secretary, Sarah Sanders. “It doesn’t have anything to do with the White House.”

This is a bit like saying that the pool of vomit outside your front door has nothing to do with you, the 12 beers you drank last night, or that fateful choice of burrito. Even under the most generous use of the present tense, and the most elastic concept of the time-space continuum, Donald Trump really does have something to do with that pile of vomit outside the West Wing.

The endless irony of Donald Trump and his brazen hacks is that they are so fantastically incompetent at deceiving the world about their own deception. Here’s the man pretending to be president tweeting about Stone’s arrest: “Greatest Witch Hunt in the History of our Country! NO COLLUSION! Border Coyotes, Drug Dealers and Human Traffickers are treated better. Who alerted CNN to be there?”

Never mind the ALL CAPS defense. Or the Awkward Capitalization. The greatest outrage of all is that CNN captured the FBI arrest on camera. When your family business is deception, the media exposure can be really, truly annoying.

Fortunately Stone seems to be such a natural liar that he apparently feels compelled to lie about lying. “There is no circumstance whatsoever under which I will bear false witness against the president, nor will I make up lies to ease the pressure on myself,” Stone told the cameras, just hours after he was indicted for telling multiple lies.

Not since Russian assassins left a trail of polonium across Europe have we seen such stupendously stupid puppets of Putin

“After a two-year inquisition, the charges today relate in no way to Russian collusion,” he helpfully explained.

Not since Russian assassins left a trail of polonium across Europe have we seen such stupendously stupid puppets of Vladimir Putin. It’s hard to decide who is the more outlandishly incompetent: Team Trump or the Brexiteers who are moving to Singapore.

Then again, Trump has somehow contrived to cave repeatedly on a government shutdown that was designed to avoid looking like he was an easy cave. So perhaps there’s no contest.

Stupid criminals may be a cliche, but recent world affairs suggest they exist nonetheless.

One retired DC police officer liked to tell the story of his favorite dumb felons. His favorite was the idiot who robbed a Home Depot store after posing as a job applicant. The moron used his real name and address on the job form before he pulled out his gun.

The Trumpsters have taken the stupid criminal genre to a new level of stupid criminality. They wrote their own confessions in so many texts, emails and meetings with Russian agents.

As their godfather considers his splendid future behind bars, he might want to revisit his best-known work. Because it won’t be long before he needs to contemplate the Art of the Plea Deal.