But at the same time, the Mueller report also reaches roughly the same conclusion about the Russia-collusion story that “Fire and Fury” offered. Wolff wrote that while there might have been “side deals and freelance operations” by campaign hangers-on, “the idea of formal collusion and artful conspiracy … seemed unlikely to everybody in the White House … Bannon’s comment that the Trump campaign was not organized enough to collude with its own state organizations became everybody’s favorite talking point — not least because it was true.”

The disorganization point is key, because it is clear enough from events like the Trump Tower meeting that people around Trump were, shall we say, unencumbered by qualms about collusion. But the report makes the idea of an active, directed conspiracy — of the sort popularized by the Steele dossier, various faulty news reports and deep-state “experts” and the Resistance industry — seem as implausible as Wolff’s White House sources insisted.

Just to read the Mueller report’s paragraphs on the change to the G.O.P. convention platform on Ukraine, long a minor locus of Putin-Trump quid pro quo conspiracy theorizing, is sufficient to recognize how much freelancing and chaos dominated the Trump campaign, and how little direction was offered from above.