Why shouldn't we be suspicious?
The New York Times reported last week that the Federal Bureau of Investigation started a counterintelligence investigation into Donald Trump in 2017 after he fired James Comey, the FBI director. The FBI wanted to determine whether Russia had influenced our president.
Over the weekend, The Washington Post reported that Trump has deliberately concealed details about his meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin from officials in his own administration - even confiscating the notes of his interpreter and instructing interpreters not to talk with other administration officials about what was said.
Why shouldn't we be horrified?
We already know that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 election to get Trump elected. America's intelligence community agrees on that. Congress even agrees on it, and members voted to invoke in 2018 sanctions against Russia in retaliation for that meddling. But wait: Now Trump's Treasury Department is pushing to end those sanctions against companies owned by Oleg Deripaska, an oligarch closely tied to Putin.
We know already that Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort had offered to Deripaska "private briefings," according to emails reported by The Washington Post, and we learned that Manafort has been accused by federal prosecutors of sharing Trump's internal political polling data with an associate linked to Russian intelligence. What would the Russians want with Trump's U.S. polling data - the kind that made deep dives into Trump support with groups such as college-educated women and blue-collar middle-aged white men - other than to micro-target Kremlin-led social media meddling efforts?
Just weeks ago, our president announced that American troops would pull out of the conflict in Syria, something that surely thrills the Russians to the bone. And then Trump bragged on the Soviet Union for its decision to invade Afghanistan in 1979, parroting Russian revisionist history by claiming it was seeking to quell terrorism. Seriously, does anyone think Trump - not a student of history by any stretch of the imagination - would even know this without a little Russian coaching?
And we mustn't forget the time Trump shared highly classified information from Israel with the Russian foreign minister in a meeting in the Oval Office - a meeting we wouldn't even know about if a Russian photograph of the event hadn't been released to a Russian news agency.
Meanwhile, our president keeps trying to sell us a collapsed bridge over swampland, insisting he has been "tougher on Russia" than previous presidents.
We're not supposed to remember that he praises Putin and other world leaders aligned with Putin.
We're not supposed to recall that Trump disparages our allies, rants about NATO, and pulls out of Syria - all brightly wrapped gifts to Russia.
Retired Adm. James G. Stavridis, the former supreme allied commander of NATO, told The New York Times that even discussing the idea of leaving NATO - let alone actually doing so - would be the "gift of the century for Putin."
Former Department of Justice counterintelligence and export control section chief David Laufman was horrified when he read The Washington Post story about Trump concealing details of his face-to-face encounters with Putin from even senior administration officials.
Laufman, who left DOJ on good terms almost a year ago, this week tweeted: "Now is the time for all good men (and women) to come to the aid of their country."
Laufman told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Monday night that he was pushed to that tipping point by The Post's report of Trump's "chilling" refusal to share his and Putin's conversations - even with U.S. officials charged with following up on those conversations.
"I feel I have a moral obligation to speak up when I see action taken by the president that in my judgment undermines the national security of the United States," Laufman said. "I think there's a culmination of things in the public record we can point to now - the unbelievable acquiescence to Vladimir Putin in Helsinki that was positively shocking to those of us who've worked in national security all of our lives, all the many things you've read about in the charging documents of people associated with the president, all those to me point to a reasonable inference that the president of the United States is a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States.
Laufman said he hopes his outspoken concern will "impel Congress, members of the administration and people" to mobilize and express their views for additional accountability.
The FBI's counterintelligence probe, we assume, was turned over to special counsel, Robert Mueller, who is examining what happened before and after Election Day between the campaign and Putin's government.
And in the midst of all this, the Republican-controlled Senate is poised to vote on a questionable new nominee for attorney general who will be Mueller's boss.
We absolutely need to be suspicious and worried. America needs to see this investigation through and know the real answers.