Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort

It's Russia o'clock again—and perhaps at this point it would be more productive to ask if there were any top Putin-allied Russian businessmen the Trump campaign was not in contact with.

Less than two weeks before Donald Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination, his campaign chairman offered to provide briefings on the race to a Russian billionaire closely aligned with the Kremlin, according to people familiar with the discussions. [...] “If he needs private briefings we can accommodate,” Manafort wrote in the July 7, 2016, email, portions of which were read to The Washington Post along with other Manafort correspondence from that time.

Under what circumstances a fabulously wealthy Putin-allied Russian billionaire might "need private briefings" about the state of an American presidential race, as detailed to him by none other than the campaign chairman of the Republican presidential candidate, is unclear. Very unclear.

Manafort's spokesman claims the effort was because the Russian owed Manafort for past work. Again, though, how being owed money by a Russian businessman might translate into the Russian businessman getting "private briefings" on the state of the presidential campaign Paul Manafort was running is unexplained.

Perhaps special counsel Robert Mueller has some ideas on that, or perhaps he doesn’t.