The Trump-Russia story is a drama that has unfolded in four acts.

Act I: Denial

George Stephanopoulos: “Are there any ties between Mr. Trump, you or your campaign and Putin and his regime?”

Paul Manafort: “No, there are not. That’s absurd.” — July 24, 2016

Donald Trump: “I have nothing to do with Russia. I don’t have any jobs in Russia. I’m all over the world, but we’re not involved in Russia.” — July 26, 2016

Hope Hicks: “There was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign.” — Nov. 11, 2016

Chris Wallace asks if there were any contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Mike Pence: “Of course not. Why would there be?” — Jan. 15, 2017

Act II: Contacts Discovered

“There were contacts,” according to a Russian official. — N.Y. Times, Nov. 10, 2016

“Trump campaign had at least 18 undisclosed contacts with Russians.” — Reuters, May 18, 2017

“Members of the Trump campaign interacted with Russians at least 32 times.” — The Washington Post, Nov. 13, 2017

“Trump and his associates had more than 100 contacts with Russians before the inauguration.” — N.Y. Times, Jan. 26, 2019

Act III: Russia’s Role

“Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election.” — U.S. Intelligence Community assessment, Jan. 6, 2017

Russian agents purchased advertising on Facebook and distributed inflammatory posts that reached at least 126 million Facebook users. The Russians published more than 131,000 messages on Twitter and uploaded more than 1,000 videos on YouTube. — Statements by the companies prepared for congressional hearings, October 2017.

Russian intelligence conspired “to gain unauthorized access (to ‘hack’) into the computers of U.S. persons and entities involved in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, steal documents from those computers, and stage releases of the stolen documents to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.” — Indictment of 12 Russians, July 13, 2018

Act IV: Confession

President Trump acknowledges that even as his presidential campaign was underway in 2016, his business was in discussions with Russia about building a Trump property in Moscow. — N.Y. Times interview, Jan. 31, 2019

Paul Manafort tells prosecutors on undisclosed date or dates that he had repeated talks with a Russian, Konstantin Kilimnik, who is believed to have ties to Russian military intelligence. Kilimnik flew to New York for one crucial dinner meeting on Aug. 2, 2016, while Manafort was Trump’s campaign chairman, and they discussed a peace proposal for Ukraine that would resolve the dispute over Putin’s intervention there. This issue was high on Putin’s agenda.

Manafort may also have handed over confidential polling data to Kilimnik; it’s not clear if this could have been used for Russian interference in the U.S. election.

A federal prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann, says on Feb. 4, 2019, “This goes, I think, very much to the heart of what the special counsel’s office is investigating.”

Manafort and Kilimnik left the Aug. 2 meeting separately by different exits.

“I have been living in a personal and mental incarceration ever since the fateful day that I accepted the offer to work for a famous real estate mogul whose business acumen I truly admired. … It was my own weakness, and a blind loyalty to this man that led me to choose a path of darkness over light.

“It is for these reasons I chose to participate in the illicit act of the president rather than to listen to my own inner voice, which should have warned me that the campaign finance violations that I later pled guilty to were insidious. … Most all, I want to apologize to the people of the United States. You deserve to know the truth, and lying to you was unjust.” — Michael Cohen, statement to the court, Dec. 12, 2018, after earlier confessing to lying to Congress about Trump’s investment interest in Russia

To the Audience

A recent Washington Post/Schar poll found that 43 percent of Americans still are skeptical that Russia interfered with the 2016 election. That should no longer be in doubt.

What isn’t clear is the role that the Trump campaign played, if any, in that interference.

What we do know is that there were more than 100 contacts between Russia and the Trump campaign; moreover, Robert Mueller, the special counsel, has shown that four people in Trump’s orbit lied about contacts with Moscow.

Unlike a play, the stakes here are enormous: This drama is about the integrity of America’s political system. We should be careful about assuming we can predict the ending, but I keep coming back to Vice President Pence’s excellent question when he denied — falsely — that there had been any contacts between Russia and the Trump campaign: “Why would there be?”

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Nicholas Kristof has been a columnist for The Times since 2001. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes, for his coverage of China and of the genocide in Darfur. You can sign up for his free, twice-weekly email newsletter and follow him on Instagram. @NickKristof • Facebook

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