Parker: Who’s next after Manafort, Gates, Papadopoulos?

Indeed, on Capitol Hill, some Republicans, who’ve been scurrying away from the indictment news as fast as their little mice feet can carry them, have moved to open an investigation into the Obama-era sale of Canada-based Uranium One, which had licenses to mine U.S. uranium, to a subsidiary of a Russian state-owned energy corporation. A committee composed of representatives from several U.S. government agencies, including the State Department — at the time led by Clinton — had to approve the sale, which transpired after the Clinton Foundation received $145 million in donations from Uranium One investors.

This would probably be a good time to grab a sheet of graph paper and a pencil. You’re going to need them to chart the many possible overlaps in this Venn diagram of Russian propaganda/possible collusion/corruption/sleaze/lies/more lies — and wires. As of yet, we have seen no videotape, though it’s possible that Papadopoulos has been wearing a wire in recent months.

Also, keep your eraser handy. People have people, you know, and others get fired. Or pardoned.

Tip of the iceberg

The question now is: Who’s next? And what bigger fish could Manafort or Gates offer up in a plea that would spare them potentially up to 80 years and 70 years, respectively, in prison? Former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s name keeps coming up, as does Wilbur Ross’. The commerce secretary was vice chair and a major investor in the Bank of Cyprus, the largest bank in a nation known to be a haven for money launderers and tax evaders, especially Russians.

None of this affirms or even bolsters a case that Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia to influence the election, especially given that many of Manafort’s relevant business dealings preceded his association with the campaign. All we know for certain is that Russia did influence the election, thanks to astounding testimony by social media leaders Tuesday.

Twitter identified 36,746 accounts associated with Russia that generated election-related content; Google found about 43 hours of election content in about 1,100 videos suspected to be of Russian origin; Facebook estimates that about 126 million people were exposed to Russian-produced stories leading up to the election.

If Trump benefited from these virtual incursions, there’s no proof that he knew about it. Then again, we’ve likely only seen the tip of the iceberg, which must loom large to swamp-dwellers. Remember, Chicago crime boss Al Capone was brought down not on murder or racketeering, but on tax evasion.