JUST GETTING WARMED UP:

"Superseding indictments are frequently brought in financial investigations due to defendant recalcitrance to cooperate and also because they take so long to be put together," said Martin Sheil, a retired supervisory special agent for the IRS' criminal investigations unit.

Mueller has been working with IRS criminal investigators, as The Daily Beast first reported in August. Those agents specialize solely in financial crimes with a tax nexus; their cooperation was an early indicator that money mattered to Mueller.

And Manafort and Gates may not be the only Trump campaign alums with headache-generating finances. On Dec. 1, retired Gen. Michael Flynn--the president's former national security adviser--pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his communications with Russian government officials. Court documents indicate that Flynn has agreed to help Mueller's team with their investigation in exchange for leniency.

Sheil noted that if Flynn isn't as cooperative as Mueller expects, then his financial dealings could be easy fodder for Mueller.

"Flynn did not disclose payments received from Russia in 2015 nor Turkey in 2016 on his Security Disclosure forms," Sheil said. "What is the likelihood he reported these sums on his tax returns?"

Additional trouble for Team Trump could arise out of the blizzard of subpoenas that reportedly went out to Deutsche Bank in the last few weeks.

The German mega-bank is likely accustomed to hot water. In January of 2017, they agreed to pay $425 million to the New York Department of Financial Services to settle allegations that they let Russian traders engage in what those regulators called "a money-laundering scheme." In that particular scheme, Russians moved $10 billion to the United States.

It's an eye-popping concession, but one that largely got lost in the noise of Trump's inauguration and the political implications of Russian efforts to intervene in the 2016 elections. But it points to close ties between the bank and Kremlin elites. The bank's lawyers signed court documents admitting they were "on clear notice" about their insufficient safeguards against unlawful activity (PDF)--while the multibillion-dollar scheme was unfolding. In fact, those lawyers admitted their traders in Moscow went "to significant lengths" to make the scheme work. They even admitted that one of their Moscow supervisors appeared to have taken bribes related to the scheme that were worth up to $2.3 million. It was underway from 2011 to early 2015.

Jared Kushner and Trump himself have had significant dealings with the bank, which also helped the hedge fund of billionaire Trump patron Robert Mercer trim billions from its tax bill. The bank has long interested congressional investigators looking into potential connections between Trump World and the Kremlin. And if reports about Mueller's subpoena of the bank are correct--and the White House says emphatically that they are not--then Mueller's money trail may be making a pit stop in Germany.

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