What didn't he know, and when didn't he know it?

In the summer of 1972, the break-in at the old Democratic National Committee in the Watergate building was foiled when night watchman Frank Wills saw tape the burglars had put over door latches. He called the cops. The cops caught the crooks. And the crooks didn't squeal, but their address book did. It listed a phone number for "Howard Hunt"-followed by two letters: "WH."

Yup, White House.

In the summer of 2016, the break-in at the new Democratic National Committee headquarters on Capitol Hill was foiled because the perps left electronic error code messages on documents they cyber-swiped and leaked to embarrass and maybe help defeat Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The perps' error codes weren't written in English but in Cyrillic characters.

Yup, Russian.

Yet this Monday, Official Washington seemed oddly aghast and agog when its news screens flashed a NEWSBREAK that basically revealed what we all should have known had to be happening-based on what we'd known for more than half a year. FBI Director James Comey confirmed at a House Intelligence Committee that: (1) The FBI has been investigating since July 2016 the electronic theft, allegedly by Russian operatives, of DNC and other Democratic political documents; and (2) The FBI has also been investigating extensive contacts between Donald Trump's campaign advisers and Russian officials and businessmen close to President Vladimir Putin.

So now we must look ahead by first peeking into our rear-view mirrors.

Ultimate blame for the 1972 DNC break-in was ultimately affixed because the top Republican on the Senate Watergate Committee, Sen. Howard Baker of Tennessee, put patriotism ahead of politics and kept asking his now-famous question:

"What did the president know and when did he know it?

Ultimate blame for the 2016 DNC break-in can be affixed only if the leading Senate and House Republicans deep-six the political expediency that dominates both parties today and are willing to patriotically pursue the truth behind the most audacious foreign attack on America's democracy in the history of our nation. And since we really knew last year so much more than we seem to remember, we must pursue a similar but somewhat different question of this president:

What did the president NOT know and when did he NOT know it?

Because nothing Trump has said or done in his soft acceptance of Russia's alleged misconduct makes any sense-unless he genuinely was unaware of even what we all had seen in the news since summer.

We knew-and Trump should have known-that when he appointed Gen. Michael Flynn as his first national security adviser, Flynn had gotten at least $65,000 from Russian enterprises with close ties to Putin. We all saw the video of Flynn beside Putin at a Russian TV banquet, which was also a paid gig.

We knew-and Trump should have known-that his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was a paid adviser of a Ukrainian politician with close ties to Russia (we also learned he reportedly earlier got big-league money from a wealthy businessman linked to Putin). Trump's campaign foreign policy adviser, Carter Page, had contact with the Russians and worked to drop GOP convention platform language on Ukraine that Putin opposed. Trump's longtime pal Roger Stone bragged bigtime last summer about his ties to WikiLeaks' Julian Assange and an alleged Russian intelligence cutout known as Guccifer 2.0. Stone famously predicted Hillary Clinton's top adviser John Podesta was about to become a figure in the leaks controversy-just before Podesta's hacked emails were leaked.

Given all that, the FBI would have been derelict if it had looked the other way and wasn't investigating Russia's hack attack on a U.S. political party. Sadly, the House Intelligence Republicans seemed mainly to care about how U.S. journalists knew about the Trump team's links to Russia-not about Russia's attack on the USA.

I believe Trump would have won the presidency without Putin's help-because Clinton lost touch with her party's blue collar rust belt and rural base.

But now we must establish that Trump really didn't know much about all the above links between his team and Putin's. Because if he knew, then we must wonder if that shaped his soft, look-the-other-way policy toward Russia's apparent attack against America's democracy. House Intelligence Chair Devin Nunes, R-Calif., Wednesday took new-found info to Trump's White House without first sharing it with his committee's Democrats. That's so wrong. Republican throwback patriots, Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham, are concerned, and so am I.

America now requires a separate (unfortunately costly) bipartisan blue-ribbon commission to do the nonpartisan fact-finding the House GOP seems unwilling to do. The whole world is watching to see if America can truly be great again.

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