While Paul Manafort was the highest-profile domino to fall on Indictment Day, this development wasn't exactly unexpected, particularly given that Robert Mueller reportedly straight-up told the former Trump campaign chair than an indictment was forthcoming several months ago. The surprising announcement, instead, was that former campaign advisor George Papadopoulos has already pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about his efforts to broker a meeting with Russia—a strong signal that Mueller has secured Papadopoulos' cooperation in the special counsel's inquiry. The statement of the offense repeatedly refers to chats between Papadopoulos and a "Senior Policy Advisor," a "High-Ranking Campaign Official," and a "Campaign Supervisor," all of whom might want to consult Their Well-Paid Lawyers very soon.

How has the White House reacted to the revelation that one of their own may already have flipped? Why, by pretending that they've never even heard of the man and, on occasion, seemingly denying his very existence.

Here is White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders during today's briefing, gamely asserting that Papadopoulos was an unpaid volunteer who had an "extremely limited" role in the campaign:

Meanwhile, here is Donald Trump, in a March 2016 conversation with the Washington Post, voluntarily naming some of his foreign policy advisors.

"Walid Phares, who you probably know. PhD, adviser to the House of Representatives. He’s a counterterrorism expert," Trump said. "Carter Page, PhD. George Papadopoulos. He’s an oil and energy consultant. Excellent guy. The honorable Joe Schmitz, [was] inspector general at the Department of Defense. General Keith Kellogg. And I have quite a few more.

Here is Sanders asserting that the powers that be at the campaign rejected Papadopoulos' offers to procure Russian dirt on Hillary Clinton, and that any of the alleged activities that he may or may not have performed were not done in any official campaign capacity.

Meanwhile, here is the section of today's statement of the offense that quotes from emails in which Papadopoulos disclosed all of his progress to the unnamed High-Ranking Campaign Official, and which concluded with the Campaign Supervisor encouraging Papadopoulos to make a trip to meet with Vladimir Putin's emissaries. (Again, these people should literally be in their attorneys' offices right now.)