The Russia reckoning

• Just before 8 a.m.., media bulletins say former Trump campaign officials Paul Manafort, 68, and his business associate Rick Gates, 45, have been told to surrender.
• At 9:01 a.m., Mueller's office announces indictment of Manafort and Gates.
• At 10:14 a.m., Mueller's office announces guilty plea of low-level Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, 30, for making false statements to FBI agents. Reading between the lines of the indictment, legal commentators quickly conclude Papadopoulos may have been wearing a wire in recent months.
• At 10:25 a.m., Trump tweets: "Sorry, but this is years ago, before Paul Manafort was part of the Trump campaign. But why aren't Crooked Hillary & the Dems the focus?????"
• At 10:28 a.m., Trump adds: "....Also, there is NO COLLUSION!"
• Just after 6 p.m., in time for the network newscasts, leaks surface of the Facebook statement for today's congressional hearing: "Our best estimate is that approximately 126 million people may have been served one of their stories at some point during the two-year period."
• Then Google's: "On YouTube, we did find 18 channels on YouTube with roughly 1,100 videos, a total of 43 hours of content, uploaded by individuals who we suspect are associated with [the Russian] effort."

• And Twitter's: "[W]e identified 36,746 accounts that generated automated, election-related content and had at least one of the characteristics we used to associate an account with Russia."

Be smart: There is zero doubt — and piles of new evidence — that Russia manipulated our election. This next phase will show if Trump himself was aware or involved, or has any interest in doing anything about it — and how extensively America's most powerful companies enabled the mass manipulation.