So this is apparently how this is going to be done. If there is a lesson here, it’s to never, ever get caught up in the U.S. justice system.

After months of special counsel work looking into potential collusion between Trump and “the Russians,” preceded by a year of FBI investigation into the same accusation, Robert Mueller revealed two indictments and one plea deal yesterday that have nothing to do with Trump/Russia collusion. In what is obviously an attempt to coerce persons involved in the Trump campaign to trade info for leniency, Mueller charged Paul Manafort and Rick Gates with 12 counts of money laundering, failure to file proper financial documents and lying to the feds and announced a plea deal with George Papadopolous to plead guilty to lying to the feds. Let’s review what this all means.

First, there is pressure in the media to deflect attention from anything Hillary-related, like maybe what she knew about paying for the bogus Trump “dossier” or pay-to-play connections with Russian interests and the Uranium One deal. In what might be considered a criminal violation of grand jury procedures, someone in Mueller’s crowd leaked the fact on Friday (that would be before the Sunday talk shows) that indictments in the Trump/Russia collusion investigation were coming on Monday. It served its purpose since a quick review of the news reporting in that time frame was dominated by speculation about who it was, how many years they would get, and what it meant for Trump. The breathless question being asked by the mainstream media was whether this was the beginning or the culmination of Mueller’s work; and of course the answer is yes. Actually, the speculation leans more to the beginning since it is impossible to prove a negative, so the probe will go on.

Since we don’t know what info Papadopolous provided, we have no idea who else might have been swept up, so arguably his case caries more concern for the Trump campaign. But who is this guy, and what exactly did he do? He was a 30-year-old volunteer to the Trump campaign as a “foreign policy advisor.” But his résumé is so thin that any foreign policy commentary is more likely related to whether the campaign should order out Chinese or Italian than anything of import. But somehow “Russian interests” in the form of a Russian “professor” who claimed to be close to “Putin’s niece” who had “dirt and emails” on Hillary and wanted a meeting with Trump thought this guy was the only one with the connections to arrange the contacts. And no, I am not making that up.

In what is so obviously a shot at grossly inflating his importance, Papadopolous tried several times to get Trump folks to take the meetings, but nothing happened! When he was questioned about the matter, he apparently gave the FBI false info about the timing of his contacts with the Russian “professor,” and, in Martha Stewart fashion, that put him in the crosshairs and resulted in a guilty plea for lying to the feds with an apparent pledge of cooperation. Again, there is the grand total of zero in any of this that has anything to do with Trump/Russia collusion. If you are thinking that this has elements of the meeting Trump’s son had with a Russian lawyer who also claimed to have the goods on Hillary, you are in good company. And nothing happened there either.

Manafort and Gates are charged with lots of stuff, but the logic seems a bit circular, hinging mostly on failure to file appropriate documents as a “foreign agent,” which is almost never prosecuted. They have pleaded not guilty. But again, the charges stem from activities predating any connection to the Trump campaign and have zero to do with potential Trump/Russia collusion. Manafort’s association with dubious Ukrainian folks might raise some eyebrows, but the biggest question in all of that may be why he wasn’t vetted more thoroughly before being named Trump’s campaign manager for four months. When info about his Ukrainian business dealings became more clear, Trump fired him. As noted, Mueller’s probe will have to live on as there is no way he will stop at these peripheral charges. If he did he would probably have exposure for wasting the government’s money for so little return. Speculation can run rampant, but if these actions are representative of what Mueller has, team Trump should be high-fiving big time.

But in the “be careful what you ask for” category, the Manafort indictment cites a relationship between Manafort and unnamed “companies A and B.” It’s not clear who they may be, but Tony Podesta, brother of Hillary campaign chief John and a major player in all things Democrat and Hillary, resigned from his lobbying firm. He told his firm that he needed to address possible legal issues arising from Manafort’s indictment. Uh-oh!

So we have hardball tactics from a special counsel with an unlimited budget and an open-ended mandate that has snared three folks on charges with zero connection to what common sense would tell you should be the primary focus of the investigations. They will be ruined when there is no indication that there is any info for them to trade with Mueller, but apparently that’s how the game is played. By all means, find out if/how Russia tried to meddle with our election process, but the first Mueller shot looks more like a predetermined conclusion about Trump collusion in search of evidence, not the other way around. But maybe the Podesta move could signal a turn to Russian collusion of the DNC/Hillary variety. To quote Trey Gowdy, let the man do his work.