Don't leave me out.

That the first indictment is against Paul Manafort … not a surprise. That the charges covers more than a decade of activity … not a surprise. That the very first charge on the very first indictment returned by Special Counsel Robert Mueller is Conspiracy Against the United States … that’s jaw-dropping.

That charge also makes it clear that Manafort and his partner Rick Gates were not a conspiracy of two, as the count includes the language “together with others” in describing their conspiracy to interfere with both the Department of Justice and the Treasury Department. And the timeline covered by the charges explicitly includes the period in which Manafort served as campaign chairman for Donald Trump. Which certainly opens the possibility that the conspiracy charges may expand to cover more names related to the Trump campaign.

What’s also notable about these charges is just what they are not. They are not based on personal testimony. They are not based off of transcripts of discussions between Manafort and others. They are not vague, or debatable, or in any sense small. These are detailed charges backed up by hard numbers and details of specific transactions.

And while Trump’s defenders are rushing to declare that the indictments are “all about business,” the nature of that business is a thunderclap of doom for Trump. At the heart of the charges is one thing: The way in which oligarchs from Russia and other former Soviet states have used the New York real estate market as a means of bringing money into the United States. That’s a practice that includes not just Manafort, but Michael Cohen, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., and the other Donald Trump.

By the 2000s, the property developer and casino owner with ready access to the capital markets and the biggest New York banks was no more. A series of corporate bankruptcies had limited his financing options. … In other words, after his business crashed, Trump was floated and made to appear to operate a successful business enterprise through the infusion of hundreds in millions of cash from dark Russian sources. He was their man.

These indictments are all about business. But it’s Donald Trump’s business.