Or the modest earlier donations were to normalize the situation prior to the strike

Thats what I was thinking. Does something like gives a low level tip, bribe, whatever you wanna call it and makes the politician feel safe. Then the rooskies likely then ask for some sort of favor in expectation for a large sum of money or they give the money with some sort of shady pretense so blackmail is still on the table.

It seems for many of these people the russians wanted to be able to have a papertrail to likely use as blackmail and or divide our nation more.

That, or these GOP idiots care about nothing but money and do not care who lines their pockets, where their ideology is for sale to the highest bidder