CNN suggests the FBI may have already uncovered evidence of inappropriate coordination, citing unnamed officials as sources.

Last week, FBI Director James Comey confirmed that his agency is looking into the oft-whispered question of whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russian groups trying to influence the US election.

Every day brings fresh revelations about the possible links between President Donald J. Trump’s campaign and Russia. Consider four recent examples.

The Associated Press revealed that Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was paid millions by a Russian oligarch between 2005 and 2009 as part of a plan to improve Russia’s political and economic interests in the US and around the world.


On Monday morning, the New York Times reported that Trump’s son-in-law and close adviser Jared Kushner would be interviewed by Senate investigators as part of their inquiry into Trump-Russia contacts.

Like a Jackson Pollack canvas brought to life by dripping paint, these dribs and dabs are starting to add up to something potentially transformative. For now, the full picture isn’t entirely clear, but the threat to Trump seems to be growing more ominous. Here’s a rundown of what we know, what is still uncertain, and how it all fits together.

What we know

Before his election, candidate Trump initially took a surprisingly soft stance toward the one-time Cold War adversary. At various times, Trump referred to Putin as a “strong leader,” waved away concerns about Putin’s use of violence, and hired a number of staffers with well-known pro-Russia views.

Trump also embraced a set of policies that seemed to align with Russian interests: questioning the value of NATO, suggesting that Russia might be allowed to keep its hold on Crimea, even altering the Republican platform to soften support for Ukrainian efforts to resist Russian incursions.


Possibly Trump was hoping for a grand bargain, a detente with Russia that would reshape global politics, improve coordination in the fight against terror, maybe even rein in nuclear weapons. But an exact strategy was never clearly articulated.

Even when US intelligence agencies concluded that Russia was conspiring to swing the 2016 election, Trump stuck with his Russophilic stance, sowing doubts about the intelligence findings.

All this happened before he was elected president. But the issue didn’t disappear when he took office. Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, was forced to resign for being less than forthright about his contacts with the Russian ambassador.

It turned out he wasn’t alone. Attorney General Jeff Sessions also neglected to reveal his meetings with the ambassador — which forced him to recuse himself from any investigation into connections between Trump and Russia.

Finally, news agencies have plumbed their intelligence contacts to help track Trump’s ties to Russia. Ever since a February New York Times report revealed the existence of previously unknown communications between Trump campaign staff and Russian intelligence, the big questions have been: Was the communication innocent? Or was it part of a coordinated strategy?

What we don’t know

Beyond this, there are also a number of suggestive, but still unsubstantiated, bits of information.

Most explosive is CNN’s recent reporting that the FBI does indeed have evidence that the Trump campaign worked with Russia to undermine opponent Hillary Clinton’s candidacy.


While CNN’s sourcing is thin and anonymous, there is already a partial corroboration. The ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said last week that there is “more than circumstantial evidence” of coordination.

Working against leaks like this are growing concerns about bias within the intelligence agencies. The profusion of leaks suggests a lack of adequate controls — and raises the possibility of partisan insiders hoping to manipulate the media and shape public opinion.

There are two figures whose potential role in the Trump-Russia scandal is shadowy, but hard to dismiss. One of them is political strategist and Trump ally Roger Stone, who seemed to know about coming WikiLeaks releases that would be damaging to Clinton. The other is Carter Page, an internationally-experienced business consultant whose loose ties to the Trump campaign may have allowed him to serve as an intermediary with Russia.

For now, it’s not clear what role these two might have played — if any — but it’s also possible their names will feature prominently in the FBI’s final report. Both have agreed to join Manafort in testifying before the House intelligence committee.

How does it all fit together?

For a while, it was possible to dismiss all this as overblown — conspiratorial even — little more than a liberal fantasy held together by circumstantial evidence and a good deal of wish-fulfillment.

But the trickle of corroborative details have made this dismissive note harder to sound. And one thing we learned for certain last week is that the FBI thinks the evidence is serious enough to justify a full investigation.


Already, the main question has turned from “Did the Trump campaign have contacts with Russian intelligence?” to “Did they coordinate on a strategy to influence the US election?” And if the evidence continues to mount, we may soon be forced to ask an even more disruptive: “What did Trump know, and when?”

In that scenario, there really doesn’t seem to be a good answer for Trump. Either he knew about the alleged coordination, which would make him complicit in the intelligence operation of a foreign government. Or he didn’t, which would suggest that he is profoundly manipulable, unaware of the hidden motives of even his closest advisers and liable to accept advice that is actually propaganda.

Of course, it’s also possible the FBI will find nothing — no nefarious collusion, just innocent contacts between Trump staffers and Russian counterparts. Not all political scandals end like Watergate. Sometimes it’s just Whitewater.

But if Comey’s testimony and the most recent leaks are any guide, the political season ahead may come to seem like a long, Russian winter for Trump and his nearest allies.

Evan Horowitz digs through data to find information that illuminates the policy issues facing Massachusetts and the U.S. He can be reached at evan.horowitz@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeHorowitz