All that said, though, a congressional committee can only ask the questions, it cannot answer them. The legislative track-record for getting responses out of executive intelligence agencies is, shall we say, uneven.

The Trump administration, in marked contrast, could answer all these questions forthwith. So, the even bigger question is: Why don’t we have the answers? Why are we left to speculate?

The poisonous thing about the Trump-Russia “collusion” controversy is that it appears to be more a political narrative than a real collaboration in serious malfeasance, notwithstanding the president’s penchant for acting like a guilty man. Is “political spying,” similarly, a narrative — just from the other side? At a certain point, don’t we have to wonder whether the people with access to the relevant information have decided they are better served by innuendo than disclosure?