10 Thoughts on Monday's Indictments

1. First Conviction: By his guilty plea, George Papadopoulos has provided Robert Mueller the first conviction stemming from his ongoing investigation into Trump-Russia collusion, aka conspiracy against the US and possibly treason. Just five months into his investigation and the first conviction has been obtained.
2. Best Case Scenario: Under the kindest interpretation of the explanations by the Trump administration, Donald's team did no due diligence prior to creating associations with various people. Under this scenario, however, the Trump administration is admitting incompetence. Think about that for a bit. Trump's team is incompetent. Heh. We already knew that. Yet, the administration can be both incompetent and guilty of criminal actions. For instance, out of sheer incompetence, Donald Jr and Jared Kushner illegally chased down a meeting with Russians to obtain proof coming directly from the Russian government.
3. Worst Case Scenario: In Papadopoulos' plea agreement, Mueller's team offered up, "There's a large scale ongoing investigation of which this case is a small part." That's extremely damning and dire words for Donald's administration, and I'm not talking about just Donald; this could include Mike Pence, given that we know he lied to the public about his knowledge of Mike Flynn's activities. It is likely involving Donald's family, too. We know Donald Jr and Jared Kushner met with Russian officials who dangled a carrot, then lied about it. You can see what I'm getting at, here, with Don Jr and Kushner -- I think under both scenarios they're going to be indicted at the very end.
4. Mueller's Probably Not Leaking: There was shock today when it was revealed that George Papadopoulos had been under a sealed indictment for months, and had signed a plea deal one month ago. He was, for the most part, completely off the radar of journalists. It was also somewhat of a surprise that Richard Gates was indicted; while he was closely associated with Manafort, clearly no one knew about how close this association was, not even the White House (see: sheer incompetence of White House). Essentially, Mueller's team is not the one leaking.  Leaks only damage their ability to leverage their case against individuals into cooperation, whereas lawyers might leak if they think getting the story out in front of the public sooner than later will eventually lessen the damage and allow them to try the case in the court of public opinion -- especially with Donald's base.
5. Who's Next: We know who has lied in public about contacts with Russians, so let's just presume that they're all targets -- lies are, after all, an atttempt to redirect away from the truth. Mike Flynn and Carter Page are two obvious choices for the next round of indictments because both were already revealed to have failed to register as foreign agents under FARA. 
6. The Real Targets: We generally know which members of the Trump Campaign have been in the broad discussions over Russia, and of those,  have been interviewed by the FBI. We can, crudely, interpret that the people who haven't yet been interviewed but have long been in the Russia discussion, are the real targets. Therefore, we know for sure that at the very least, Donald, Don Jr., and Jared Kushner are at the very top of the chain. But, we also know that Jay Sekulow and Jeff Sessions have knowledge about Russian interactions and they haven't yet been interviewed by the FBI, which is to say that it's a very strong possibility that these two are just one rung removed from the top. We'll know soon enough, by which people get interviewed next.
7. Donald's Poll Numbers: Since last Friday, when we learned about the grand jury's indictments, Donald's approval numbers have taken a huge hit. Gallup shows a net -5 point loss in a matter of three days. We know this story is going to continue to expand, especially over the next few days as journalists make up for the missing narrative that was created by George Papadopoulos' conviction. This is going to be one hell of a week in politics.
8. New York: Lest we forget, NY AG Eric Schneiderman is also conducting his own investigation, in cooperation with Mueller's team. This matters, insofar that a conviction under state laws cannot be pardoned by POTUS as he has no jurisdiction. Given how things have played out so far, it would be foolish not to assume that Mueller and Schneiderman have played out full scenarios and are already following their agreed-upon strategy of investigations and indictments.
9. Timing of Trials: Even under the best outcomes, a speedy trial requires a few months of pretrial motions, appeals, and scheduling conflicts. This is to say, Manafort and Gates won't be in trials until next year. They're just the tip of the iceberg, however, which means that 2018 could be the Year of Endless Trials and Indictments, or YETI for short. That bodes extremely poorly for Republicans in Congress and their 2018 midterm chances. Imagine the ongoing questions posed to Republicans about their failures to broach the subject of impeachment and their attempts to attack any investigations into the Trump campaign.
10. The Beginning of the End?: If his removal from office is the end, then Monday was not the beginning of the end. I would argue, the day he won the election was the beginning of the end. If he'd lost exactly as he'd reportedly anticipated, no one would have cared as much that Russia may have colluded with his campaign -- in this case, people would have tended to believe that Russia's interference was ineffectual and deserving of mockery instead of scrutiny. The spotlight he invited eventually provided the room to appoint Robert Mueller to look into Donald's financial dealings. Without Rod Rosenstein's specific letter granting Mueller wide powers to investigate, no one would have been able to follow the money up the chain to Donald. Just saying, only an idiot would run for office despite a lot of backroom deals and a long history of criminal settlements.