"Circumstantial, my dear Watson."

Congressman Adam Schiff (D) on circumstantial evidence: if you go to bed at night and the streets are clear and you wake up the next morning and they are snow covered you are pretty much compelled to believe "it snowed last night" even though you lack the "direct evidence" of having actually SEEN it snow. (paraphrase)

Even though there is no DIRECT evidence of collusion between folks in the Trump orbit and the Russian military intelligence effort, there is apparently enough CIRCUMSTANTIAL evidence to launch a counter-espionage investigation examining, among other things, individuals associated with Trump.

I suspect that means sufficient probable cause to get FISA warrants for wire taps on those American citizens.

There are, as far as I can tell, two ways to account for the Flynn transcript: an analyst or intelligence officer very close to the operational end leaked the raw transcript pre-minimizing it to protect Flynn's identity OR that at some level - possibly higher up the food chain - leaked a transcript collected under warrant IN WHICH FLYNN WAS THE *TARGET* of the investigation without any intent of "minimizing" his name from the record.

This is extremely serious.

A way to get perspective on this - for those of a certain age - is to ask yourself, "Does this look more like Benghazi... or Watergate?"

Again, no direct, non-circumstantial evidence of collusion.

But enough probable cause to wield the considerable, court-sanctioned investigative tools available to the FBI.