It was reported way back that Michael Cohen would be the Finance Chairman of the RNC. This little fact should have been a clue as to why the Republicans in Congress are so unwilling to do anything with regards to Individual-1.
If Michael Cohen were doing things for the RNC like he was doing for Individual-1, there may have been other cover-ups for other candidates that required hush money, or if there were other deals that would clearly violate campaign finance rules.
The extreme thoughts, which may be clearly obvious as the Butina case becomes clear, is that in some way the RNC (NRA, or other organizations associated to the RNC) laundered money for Russians, in a completely unknown way at first, but then as Individual-1 started to realize he had leverage over the entire party, he started to strong arm all of them. While this seems very House of Cards, it seems to be a very likely conclusion based on all of the dots that are out there. I hope the press can substantiate this as it really does seem like a no-brainer in the grand scheme of things.
I will admit, it sounds very conspiracy theory, but nothing in this world of Individual-1 surprises me anymore!