1, Jon Stewart 
 
 Image: Carolyn Kaster / AP Photo 
 
 
 
 Opinionated, funny—and, according to our panel of 20-plus MacArthur geniuses, the smartest person of 2010. Jon Stewart, conventional wisdom went, peaked after Barack Obama was elected (his comic foil had left office). Yet two years later, the brains behind The Daily Show remains speedier and more biting than the media monoliths and political establishment he regularly skewers. This year, Stewart went further. He turned his logic-rooted, hypocrisy-bashing comedy into action, with his Stephen Colbert co-hosted Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, which drew roughly 200,000 people to the National Mall in late October. Lawmakers later called him out as instrumental in helping pass health-care funding for 9/11 first responders. "Jon Stewart really took the push for the 9/11 bill into overdrive by doing two separate nights' worth of coverage last week, and drawing attention to this that the networks had not," Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) said. And while still a liberal darling, Stewart flexed his independent muscles, increasingly going after Obama, and even opening a rational dialogue with Bill O'Reilly. ||||| On April 9, 2018, Roger Stone sent an email that would play a role in his future arrest. Though it wasn’t the only reason he was hauled into a Florida courtroom on Friday morning, Special Counsel Robert Mueller quoted portions of it in his indictment of the Trump ally—an indictment that shook Washington and added an absurdist edge to the Mueller probe. 
 
 The email, which The Daily Beast obtained before a grand jury indicted Stone on several charges, shows just how irate Stone was about an acquaintance, Randy Credico. The exchange began when Credico emailed a group of people on the evening of April 9, 2018, about what he called an upcoming “media tour.” 
 
 “It’s the “RANDY IS FULL OF SHIT “ tour Co- sponsored by Jack Daniels and Pablo Escobar,” Stone replied. 
 
 In another email, about an upcoming Credico appearance on MSNBC, Stone speculated that he would be able to sue Credico over comments he might make. 
 
 “Send me your address,” Stone wrote. “I bet I can get you served in a lawsuit the very next morning.” 
 
 “Remember to bathe,” he added. 
 
 Another email included more invective. 
 
 “When I wipe my ass what’s on the toilet paper is worth more than You are,” Stone wrote. 
 
 “Your threats are a violation of state and federal law,” Credico replied. 
 
 Then Stone sent the email Mueller would quote portions of. 
 
 “I know u are a dumb shit but read the Constitution,” he wrote. 
 
 I have a constitutional right to call you a lightweight pantywaist cocksucker drunk asshole piece of shit and I just did You are a rat. A stoolie. You backstab your friends-run your mouth my lawyers are dying Rip you to shreds I’m going to take that dog away from you. Not a fucking thing you can do about it either because you are a weak broke piece of shit I will prove to the world you’re a liar 
 
 “You don't have a constitutional right to threaten me and especially not threaten my dog… you crossed a red line,” Credico retorted. Stone had threatened to steal his service dog. 
 
 “Rot in hell,” Stone replied. 
 
 A month later, they had another semi-incomprehensible exchange that included accusations of drug abuse and financial problems. Stone emailed Credico, “I will piss on your grave.” 
 
 A few weeks after that later, Stone and Credico had another dramatic exchange. 
 
 “You are a pathetic loser,” Stone wrote on May 21. “Let’s see who’s around a year from now and who isn’t cocksucker” 
 
 “Another one of your threats,” Credico replied. 
 
 “Not a threat. A prediction. How you feeling champ ?” Roger replied. 
 
 The Daily Beast shared screenshots of the emails with Stone’s lawyer, Grant Smith. When asked if he had any comment, Smith replied, “No.” 
 
 After publication, Smith said Mueller was misusing the emails. 
 
 “You are presenting things that are completely out of context with a decades long relationship,” he texted. “These two people talk like that to one another for years and years, it is nothing unusual and it certainly does not rise to the level of what the special counsel’s office charged.” 
 
 Martin Stolar, a lawyer for Credico, declined to comment. “Randy will make public statements concerning the indictment if and when he’s called to testify.” he said. 
 
 Stone and Credico’s relationship—the link between a political arch-villain and a New York stand-up comic—has found its way into the investigation of the century. And it highlights one of the most amusing realities of the special counsel's into Russian meddling in the 2016 election: Mueller, a notoriously serious and straight-faced law man, has spent a huge amount of time dealing with clowns. 
 
 Stone, for his part, is basically a political performance artist. He spent his decades-long career in the public eye enmeshing himself in scandals, lobbing wild-eyed accusations at his critics, and honing the practice of wildly over-the-top political dirty tricks. He also wrote a column on men’s fashion for The Daily Caller. 
 
 He wore a top hat to Trump’s inauguration. He paraded around the 2016 Republican National Convention alongside conspiracy-monger Alex Jones while sporting a T-shirt accusing Bill Clinton of rape. He suggested Trump fans should storm the hotel rooms of RNC delegates who didn’t support Trump. He got booted from Twitter and banned from CNN. 
 
 He ran a lobbying firm with Paul Manafort. He got fired from Bob Dole’s campaign for putting out a newspaper ad for swingers. He starred in a Netflix documentary. He left the Trump campaign under contested circumstances and endeared himself to the internet conspiracy community, even questioning the scientific consensus on vaccines. 
 
 This is the man Mueller has dogged for months. 
 
 Credico, whose communications with Stone featured in his indictment, is also an ur-eccentric. As a comedian and drug-legalization activist, he drew notoriety for marching into the New York State Capitol dressed as the ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes, complete with a toga and a fake beard. Once there, he protested the state’s drug laws by lighting up a joint. 
 
 Credico is an expert at mimicking other people’s voices, impersonating Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan or Donald Trump at the drop of a hat. A small, white long-haired dog named Bianca is his constant companion. He even took her along for questioning by Mueller’s team. 
 
 Both men drew Mueller’s interest—Credico as a witness, Stone as a target—because of their shared interest in WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Credico, a self-described lefty, has long been a fan of WikiLeaks for revealing government secrets. Stone, meanwhile, wanted to get to Assange during the 2016 campaign in the his site had emails Hillary Clinton hadn’t made public. 
 
 A few weeks before the election, Credico interviewed Assange on his radio show. He would later visit the Ecuadorian embassy in London. The two men exchanged emails about Wikileaks before Assange started dumping emails stolen from Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta. And Stone also made a series of cryptic, apparently prescient, statements about Wikileaks, which generated noisy speculation that he was getting information from inside the embassy. 
 
 After the election, when Special Counsel Mueller started investigating potential coordination between the Kremlin and Trumpworld, he soon zeroed in on Stone. As Mueller questioned a host of Stone’s long-time associates, congressional investigators grilled Stone himself. 
 
 Credico, in turn, faced questions about his relationships with WikiLeaks, ties to Stone, and alleged work as an intermediary between Stone and Assange. Stone had hinted in the past that Credico connected him to WikiLeaks, while Credico has long denied acting as any sort of go-between. 
 
 As those probes unfolded, Stone grew increasingly agitated. He told reporters he expected to be charged, and he lambasted Mueller for running a witch hunt. A few days before his indictment, he texted The Daily Beast to say he would expose monstrous misconduct by Mueller’s team if indicted. 
 
 On Friday morning, it was clear Stone’s actions after Mueller’s probe started had created his most immediate legal problems. The indictment alleges that he lied to Congress about his communications with Credico and another associate, Jerome Corsi; that he obstructed an official proceeding; and that he tampered with an unnamed witness, known to be Credico. And it cites the email printed above as one example of a statement “intended to prevent Person 2 from cooperating with the investigations.” 
 
 That’s how a foul-mouthed exchange that reads like it's written on the wall of a dive-bar bathroom found its way into what’s arguably the most geopolitically consequential criminal investigation in decades.
– The biggest intellectual, cultural, and technological achievements of the year were powered by these brains—some we know well, some we don’t. The Daily Beast got together with 20-plus recent winners of MacArthur “Genius” grant to determine the year’s smartest: Jon Stewart. Going beyond the biting Daily Show, Stewart "turned his logic-rooted, hypocrisy-bashing comedy into action" by organizing the Rally to Restore Sanity and pushing hard—and successfully—for the passage of the 9/11 first responders health bill. Bill and Melinda Gates. These days, for Mr. and Mrs. Microsoft, it’s all about philanthropy. This year, their Giving Pledge called on billionaires like themselves to give away at least half their money. Some estimate they'll get commitments totaling $150 billion. Steve Jobs. The Apple frontman brought out the iPad and iPhone 4; Apple TV was hot; the Beatles hit iTunes. Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook hit 500 million users this year, greasing Zuck's path toward Time's Person of the Year. J. Craig Venter. The scientist's team developed the first organism whose genome was synthetic, a 15-year project whose results he revealed this year. See the other 15 smartest people.