As is so often the case with the White House, a small victory on Monday was sidelined by an incredible crisis of the Trump administration’s own creation. A smooth start to the Senate confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch should have been an easy win for Donald Trump; instead, the esteemed judge’s public debut was overshadowed by James Comey’s brutal five-hour testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, during which the F.B.I. director offered a historic rebuke of the sitting president when he confirmed the existence of an investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia and dismissed Trump’s astounding—and unsubstantiated—allegation that his predecessor had wiretapped Trump Tower. Despite the Trump team’s best efforts to spin the hearing and downplay the revelation, Comey’s testimony came as a historic blow to the two-month old administration, virtually guaranteeing that the White House would remain under suspicion and mired in scandal for well beyond its first 100 days.

Comey’s bombshell testimony, which was amplified by blistering comments from National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers, forced the White House on the defensive. Republicans on the House Intelligence panel did their best to carry water for the embattled administration, grilling Comey and Rogers on the illegality of the leaks that brought details of the ongoing investigation to press. Press secretary Sean Spicer tried in earnest to control the damage by claiming, laughably, that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort—who is among the people under investigation by the F.B.I.—played only a “limited role” in the campaign. He also described Mike Flynn, a top adviser to the Trump campaign who went on to serve as national security adviser before resigning, as a “volunteer.”

Throughout Washington, however, there is the growing sense that the Russian scandal will not be spun away or resolved quietly. “The longer this hangs out there, the bigger the cloud,” Representative Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a former Trump transition adviser, said Monday while questioning Comey. “If you have evidence, especially as it relates to people working in the White House or in the administration, that is information we really should know.”

Like a black hole, the Russia affair is quickly growing in size and scope, consuming political capital and dragging anyone with a connection to the Trump campaign and the Kremlin into the vortex of suspicion. On Monday, months after reports first surfaced that Manafort was designated to receive $12.7 million in undisclosed payments from Ukraine’s pro-Russian party, a member of Ukraine’s parliament, Serhiy Leshchenko, leaked documents allegedly showing steps Manafort had taken to launder the money, The New York Times reports. (Manafort has continued to deny all wrongdoing.)

Democrats are already agitating to subpoena more Trump associates to drag them before the House Intelligence spotlight. “We've heard from the easy witnesses, right? We’ve heard from the director and Admiral Rogers,” Rep. Eric Swalwell, a member of the committee, said Tuesday morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “The harder witnesses are going to be people like Michael Flynn, Carter Page, Paul Manafort, bringing individuals in who were actually witnesses to what was going on.”

Members of the Trump administration are certainly not making things easier on themselves by continuing to ignore or dismiss even the most sober, grounded concerns about Russia. Hours after Spicer tried to disappear both Manafort and Flynn from history, Reuters reported that Rex Tillerson, who has largely stayed off the radar despite his own longstanding ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, plans to skip what would be his first NATO meeting in order to attend a meeting between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jingping that weekend at Mar-a-Lago. Days later, the secretary of state is also scheduled to meet with Putin, fueling speculation that Trump—who has called NATO “obsolete” and sparked concerns for his effusive praise of Putin—intends continue his alignment with Russia—a curious decision given the current political climate. “It feeds this narrative that somehow the Trump administration is playing footsie with Russia,” one former U.S. official told Reuters. “You don’t want to do your early business with the world's great autocrats. You want to start with the great democracies, and NATO is the security instrument of the transatlantic group of great democracies,” he added.

With Trump already battling dismal approval ratings, any appearance that the White House is cozying up to Russia amid the ongoing investigation into Trump’s Kremlin ties will only further damage public perception of his presidency. “The underlying thing is huge (potentially),” Matt Miller, who served in the Justice Department under President Obama said of the situation to Axios. “Even if the underlying thing ends up not being real, investigations can still produce leaks and charges over cover-up.” Already on Monday, there were signs that the F.B.I. investigation is taking on a life of its own. When Comey told the House Intelligence Committee that he “was not going to comment on anybody,” he thrust the entire West Wing under suspicion, one source close to the administration told Mike Allen. “You flush people out by making a comment like that. You let it sit there, then later go get everybody’s email and texts [to see how they reacted to it]. This is how you get a lot of people having to hire lawyers.”