T he indictments handed down this week against Paul Manafort President Trump’s former campaign manager do not implicate the president himself.

Manafort and his former business partner Rick Gates face a dozen charges on money laundering and hiding their work for the Ukraine.

In going after Manafort Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller III has gone fishing hoping that if Manafort’s close relationship with Trump can shed some light on any alleged Russian connections Manafort will strike a plea bargain.

It’s a wild long shot but not a total impossibility contends Gideon Remez who along with his wife Isabella Ginor are fellows at the Truman Institute at Hebrew University.

Remez says when the Soviet Union collapsed in the late 1980s they left large sums of money in various KGB funds and enterprises overseas.

“Since time immemorial they have tried to establish cells outside of their country to destabilize different states in the world including the US ” Remez said.

According to Remez the original suspicions against Trump center on the financial woes of the Trump Group’s real estate empire in 2007 when American banks pulled their credit lines. Could some of this Russian money have found its way into the Trump Group’s coffers? Politico quoted the president’s son Don Jr. saying “we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”