( CNN) NO COLLUSION, Donald Trump will tell you — or, really, anyone — if you ask about the ongoing special counsel investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election and the possibility that members of the Trump orbit colluded with the Russians to help him win.

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But, boy oh boy, is there a lot of smoking. So much smoke that it is choking the Trump administration's ability to do almost anything.

Consider what we learned Thursday morning when former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to keep lying to Congress about the nature and length of his interactions with Russians regarding the potential construction of a Trump Tower in Moscow.

Could Cohen be lying? Sure! After all, he lied to Congress already!

But Cohen is the one who is risking his plea bargain if it turns out he lied under oath to special attorney Robert Mueller and his squad. Trump, by comparison, can say — and tweet — whatever he likes publicly without any criminal concerns.( The same is not correct, of course, of the written answers to Mueller's questions that Trump and his legal team submitted last week .)

The smoke thrown off by the Cohen plea deal alone is substantial. But it only adds to all the other smoke that's already in the ambiance surrounding Trump, his closest associates and Russians.

We know, for example, that Donald Trump Jr ., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort met with a lawyer linked to the Kremlin at Trump Tower in June 2016, seduced to the meeting by a promise from the Russians that they had dirt on Hillary Clinton.

We know that Trump Jr. didn't initially tell the truth about the impetus for the session. We know that Donald Trump dictated Trump Jr.'s original misleading statement when the news of the meeting break. We know that, despite the unanimous concision of the intelligence community that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump and hurt Clinton, the President has repeatedly carried skepticism — including with Russian President Vladimir Putin standing next to him — of that fact. We know that former Trump national security consultant Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to Mueller's team about the nature and extent of his contacts with Russian officials. We know that Trump, in the Oval Office, told then Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and Russia Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that he had “just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job, “ and added: “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That's taken off.” We know that Trump told NBC's Lester Holt that the real reason he had fired FBI Director James Comey was “this Russia thing.”

I could go on — and on — but you get the idea. And if you don't get the idea then, well, you're trying not to get the idea.

Is it possible — as Trump forever asserts — that all of this smoking is just smoke? That it is not possible to actual fire? No proof of anything?

Sure. We don't have the Mueller report yet. And what we know publicly is smoke , not a full-on fire. But it is a whole hell of a lot of smoking. And it's making it very hard for the Trump administration to see anything at all.