Should U.S. taxpayers care about it, though? The answer is yes. The Manafort case promises to lead a diligent investigator to stashes of dirty post-Soviet money that represent a bigger threat to U.S. democracy than any leaked emails or Russian-bought Facebook ads. It would be naive to imagine that, after working for years for Yanukovych and taking his tainted cash, the consultants didn't bring any of the cynicism and rule-bending prowess to U.S. politics.
This is not the kind of baggage one can leave outside the door. The political operatives, spin doctors, lobbyists, and lawyers who have taken the Russian, Ukrainian, Kazakh, Azerbaijani money have contributed to the poisoning of the U.S. political scene.
Trump won the election last year on the promise to clean up the swamp they helped create -- but he himself is a creature of that swamp.