A Never-Trumper woman gave me a Christmas gift for our times, “Proof of Collusion: How Trump Betrayed America” by Seth Abramson, a former criminal defense attorney, criminal investigator, and journalism professor.

It s not an expose in the traditional pot-boiling, page-turning sense. Rather, it’s a compilation of all presently known reported facts about the Trump-Russia connection. It is essentially a heavily annotated time-line of a successful covert attack on American democracy by a hostile foreign power.

Trump obsessives will be familiar with the general flow of events and many of the participants, but this forensic analysis of the case puts flesh on the bones, adds to the cast, and provides new connections that explain previously baffling loose ends.

It is a damning portrait of nefarious plotting by Russia, but also eager, willing collusion on the part of many in the Trump orbit. There is also a surprising amount of money sloshing around whose ultimate destination is not yet clear to bystanders.

The head of the Russian oil giant Rosneft seeks a partial sale to Swiss and Qatari funds, but it can only take place if sanctions are lifted. He uses Carter Page as a go-between to promise Trump millions in a brokerage fee if he cooperates. The same Qatari fund coincidentally bails Jared Kushner out of a ruinous real estate deal that threatens to bankrupt him. Saudi Arabia offers remuneration if Trump approves the sale of nuclear power plants they seek.

It may already be clear to Mueller how money changed hands, and with subpoena power in the hands of Reps. Nadler, Schiff, and Cummings we may soon understand more fully how the Trumps and Kushners sought to profit by selling government favors to Russians, Saudis, and Qataris, not to mention many campaign hangers-on and functionaries whose motives were more pecuniary than patriotic.

I realize this begins to sound like the raving of wild-eyed conspiracy theorists or screenwriters of Hollywood thrillers, but putting together the jigsaw puzzle of many old stories yields a very troubling larger picture.

For instance, you will recall the absurd internet noise about Pizzagate that late in the campaign painted Hillary Clinton as the kingpin in a pedophile gang. Turns out it was not just a figment of the imagination of the alt-right fringe. It was instead just one of many of the dirty tricks launched by the Russian cyber-villains, and was aided and abetted by Michael Flynn, Steve Bannon, Eric Prince, Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump Jr.

Panning for gold in the public record, as Abramson does, turns up one nuggets after another lying around in plain sight. Days after the election, the Russian deputy foreign minister casually confirms that there were “many undisclosed contacts between the Trump campaign and Kremlin agents during the 2016 presidential election.” This, of course, is just what Trump and his minions have been vigorously denying for two years, several at the risk of perjury indictments.

Similarly, K.T. McFarland, who in 2013 suggested Vladimir Putin deserved a Nobel Peace Prize for his intervention in Syria, was in December 2016 waiting to assume her duties as Michael Flynn’s national security deputy. In an internal email, she warned Trump personnel against escalating sanctions that Obama had imposed in retaliation for the cyber attacks. Why? Because, if that were to happen “Trump will have difficulty improving relations with Russia, which has just thrown U.S.A. election to him.”

Thanks to Abramson’s work in putting known facts end to end, apparently peripheral players like McFarland suddenly become more significant figures. Others include Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, and Eric Prince who all begin to be revealed as having been part of the elaborate plot to elect Trump by fair means or foul, and often to enrich themselves in the process.

Russians are everywhere including Maria Butina, the honeypot Russian spy, now known for enlisting her paramour Paul Erickson to infiltrate the NRA and ultimately to siphon Russian money through it to the Trump campaign. Erickson also lobbies for K.T. McFarland’s appointment to the National Security Council (NSC). And the Zeliglike Butina is shown to have been in touch as well with Jeff Sessions’ man at the NSC, J.D. Gordon, a high level Trump campaign aide, Rick Dearborn, and even a Federal Reserve Vice Chairman.

Her handler was Alexander Torshin, a close associate of Putin, and a Russian mafia boss accused of money laundering by Spain. He was decorated in 2016 by the Russian spy agency FSB. He is also seen here dining with Donald Trump Jr. at an NRA event. These characters join a rogue’s gallery of other Russians, among them the real estate promoting Agalarovs, and billionaire oligarch Viktor Vekselberg who funded Trump’s hush money fund through Michael Cohen. In many of these cases, it seems clear there was an implied quid pro quo.

Trump’s antipathy to the intelligence community is also further explained by the fact that they are on to him long before he takes office. In early 2017, CIA officers meet with their Israeli counterparts for Mossad and warn them to be wary of sharing intelligence with Trump once he takes office because he “is compromised by a foreign power.” British agent Christopher Steele, of dossier fame, also ceases to cooperate with Trump’s FBI, with which he had longstanding relationships, because he believes it has been compromised.

The detailed time-line provided here clearly suggests Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner were far more central to the plot to steal the election and to enrich themselves in the process than their occasional appearances and repeated denials suggest. They are likely to have good reason to fear Mueller and the rest of the burgeoning investigations because a four-lane trail of breadcrumbs leads back to them.

“Proof of Collusion” offers a first draft of the yet to be written history of the hidden reasons for Trump’s rise and likely fall. One comes away appalled that the facts are even worse than one suspected, but heartened that, as usual, keeping complicated criminal or political conspiracies secret is not so easy. Especially when so many of the accomplices are so clumsy and the pursuers so relentless.