We all knew this was coming. I wrote about it back in August of last year. Now it’s official. Comrade Trump has been indicted, formally accused of violating the national security laws he was sworn to protect.

There’s already a fuck-ton of bullshit being hurled at great force into various social media and news outlets. Some of that bullshit is important; most isn’t. Even though the indictments are sealed at present, we can make a fairly accurate guess at what’s in them. Here’s the thing: down at the bone, this is a pretty simple criminal case.

I’m going to make a terribly flawed analogy here. I’m telling you up front that it’s a flawed analogy, so don’t wast time telling me it’s a flawed analogy. It’s flawed, but it’s still pretty accurate. Right, here we go.

Let’s say you got fired from your job as a…I don’t know, a warehouse worker. You got fired, so when he left on your last day, you also decided to take the forklift you drove at the warehouse. The warehouse manager calls you, says, “Dude, that wasn’t your forklift. We need that forklift back.” You say, “Forklift? What forklift?” The manager says, “You were seen driving away in the forklift and hey, it’s parked outside your garage right now. It’s got the warehouse logo on it. We want it back, please.” You remove the logo from the forklift, park the forklift inside the garage, and send the manager the logo with a note saying, “There you go.” The manager says, “Yeah, no. We want the whole forklift. C’mon, dude.” You say, “It’s my forklift; we bonded during the months we worked together.” The manager says, “Just give us the goddamn forklift. We don’t want to send the cops.” You say, “Okay, I’ll give you the forklift.” You don’t give them the forklift. The manager loses patience and sends the cops. The cops find the forklift in your garage; parts of it are missing. You claim you have no idea how the forklift got into your garage and no idea what happened to those missing parts.

Then you ask to be rehired for your job at the warehouse.

It’s a flawed analogy, but it’s still basically accurate. Trump took shit that didn’t belong to him — shit that put our national security at risk, shit that has very likely caused intelligence agents and assets in China and Iran to flee or, in some cases, to be captured and killed. He refused to return that shit when asked. He eventually gave some shit back, but kept other shit. He lied about having that other shit, both to the government and even to his own lawyers. Later he claimed the shit belonged to him. Now some of that shit is missing.

Again, the basic facts are simple and easy to understand. The implications, however, are neither simple nor easily understood. I’m talking about the political implications, and the social implications, and the national security implications.

There’s a thing called graymail. It’s like blackmail for spies. How does the government accuse somebody of illegally handling secret documents when the documents are secret? Graymail involves a person accused of mishandling (or stealing) secret information threatening to reveal the contents of those secrets in open court if they’re brought to trial.

You know Trump will try to graymail his way out of this. And he’ll succeed, at least in part. We’ll never hear about the very worst things he’s probably done, because it would reveal national security issues.

But there’s good news — or something like good news. Some of the secret material Trump stole will be low level intel that the government is willing to burn in order to get a conviction. The punishment for mishandling a low level secret document is the same as mishandling a really critically important document.

At this point, some 12-14 hours after we learned about the indictments, we’re mostly operating on assumptions. We’re told there will be seven indictments and we assume that’s true. We can make some intelligent guesses about the actual crimes Trump is being charged with, but we don’t actually know. We have no idea how many counts of each indictment–how many separate acts are being charged.

All we have at the moment are broad outlines based on widely reported facts. But we do know this: The indictments will be labeled The United States of America v. Donald J. Trump.

And there it is. The United States versus Trump. Pick a side.