People with access are paid considerable sums of money whether there is an immediate return or not. That is how Harper and John Baird got onto Easy Street. The significance of Manafort to Mueller's investigation is that here we have a guy who helped a Russian-connected Ukrainian President to get elected. Manafort and Gates have connections to Russia and both end up on Trump's campaign team until Manafort got caught out. Donald Trump Jr and others have stated how much of the Trump empire's financing comes from Russia. Now we have the Russian-connected campaign team members for the Russian-financed Presidential candidate and we have Russians in possession of emails embarrassing to Hillary Clinton. It doesn't sound like Manafort and the Russians did the Democrats any great favours! So, do you think Dubya was being influenced by the Russians, he was still in power in 2006?