The conspiracy had as its object impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful governmental functions of the United States by dishonest means in order to enable the Defendants to interfere with U.S. political and electoral processes, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

—United States of America v. Internet Research Agency et. al.

Goddamn them all.

Goddamn the hackers. Goddamn the journalists who laundered the pilfered material. Goddamn any of them who treated Roger Stone as a source, or as a cute prankster, instead of the nasty vandal he’s always been. Goddamn the pundits who chortled over the pilfered material. Goddamn the politicians who profited from the hacking. Goddamn the politicians who minimized the hacking. Goddamn the politicians who still stonewall about the hacking. Goddamn the “activists” who ranted about “McCarthyism” when anybody pointed out that the 2016 presidential election had been poisoned from afar. Goddamn them all as traitors, if not to the American nation, then to everything that ever made that nation worth the bother.

They conspired, wittingly or unwittingly. They colluded, wittingly or unwittingly. They are accessories, before and after the fact, to the hijacking of a democratic election. So, yes, goddamn them all.

Trump on-stage with then-campaign manager Paul Manafort at the 2016 Republican National Convention Getty Images

Bob Mueller dropped the first of many shoes on Friday. Rod Rosenstein announced the indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers on charges of helping to ratfck the 2016 presidential election under the noms de ratfck "DCLeaks" and "Guccifer 2.0." Rosenstein went out of his way to say that no Americans were named in the indictment, so the White House grabbed onto that as though it were the last floating deck chair off the Lusitania. But it is very clear from the indictment that Mueller has the goods, all of the goods, and that nothing is going to slow him down or knock him off pace. (Notice how the indictment details how seriously the Russians took the president* appeal to them to find HRC’s “lost” emails.) The mills of the gods and all that.

Here’s the whole indictment, and its Tolstoyan cast of defendants, for you to read. Nobody has any illusions that these folks ever will see the inside of a United States federal courthouse, although a little discreet abduction wouldn’t be out of line, as far as I’m concerned. (Not really, but, maybe.) But there’s enough in the indictment to make a lot of people in this country nervous. To wit:

Between in or around June 2016 and October 2016, the Conspirators used Guccifer 2.0 to release documents through WordPress that they had stolen from the DCCC and DNC. The Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, also shared stolen documents with certain individuals.

a. On or about August 15, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, received a request for stolen documents from a candidate for the U.S. Congress. The Conspirators responded using the Guccifer 2.0 persona and sent the candidate stolen documents related to the candidate’s opponent.

Getty Images

b. On or about August 22, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, transferred approximately 2.5 gigabytes of data stolen from the DCCC to a then-registered state lobbyist and online source of political news. The stolen data included donor records and personal identifying information for more than 2,000 Democratic donors.

On or about August 22, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, sent a reporter stolen documents pertaining to the Black Lives Matter movement. The reporter responded by discussing when to release the documents and offering to write an article about their release.

44. The Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, also communicated with US. persons about the release of stolen documents. On or about August 15, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, wrote to a person who was in regular contact with senior member of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump, “thank for writing back . . . anyt[h]ing interesting in the docs I posted?”

Roger Stone Getty Images

On or about August 17, 2016, the Conspirators added, “please tell me if i can help anyhow . . . it would be a great pleasure to me.? On or about September 9, 2016, the Conspirators, again posing as Guccifer 2.0, referred to a stolen document posted online and asked theperson, “What do think of the info on the turnout model for the democrats entire presidential campaign?” The person responded, “[p]retty standard.”

Ignorance will be pleaded. The candidate, lobbyist, journalist, and person close to the Trump campaign will argue that they thought they were dealing with that 400-pound guy in New Jersey. It’s too late now to start believing those protestations. There was enough out there about the ratfcking in the middle of the summer of 2016 to make anyone who cared to look suspicious of being handed anything by hackers, and this includes WikiLeaks, which has had its halo knocked into the Bay of Fundy for good and all by this indictment. Too many people didn’t care, because Trump couldn’t ever win, and because it had been open season on Hillary Rodham Clinton for 25 years, and, boy, was that ever fun!

There's so much more coming. You can feel the hoofbeats of the horseman and the baying of the hounds behind every syllable of this indictment. My guess is that Mueller's not going to move on anyone in the United States until very late in the game. He's given all those folks a look at just a piece of what he's got. That's got to have their knees watery. And, because this is 2018, and everything is awful and strange, the president* this conspiracy helped to install is meeting, one on one, with the architect of it all, the Tsar of all the ratfckers, tomorrow. Everyone should be so very proud.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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