President Trump has hit back angrily at America's intelligence agencies, accusing them of criminally leaking information to the media that's designed to discredit him.
The President was speaking out after news organizations in the United States reported that four of his top campaign aides are now under FBI investigation, suspected of having engaged in "constant contact" with top leaders in Russia throughout last year's election.
The White House is now deluged with questions about whether President Trump knew of the contacts with Russia, though he's dismissed the media reports as "nonsense".
In his Washington Notebook our US Correspondent Simon Marks says bluster and bravado may not help the President and his associates overcome the crisis.
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It used to be said that when an American President was elected, his political honeymoon could be expected to last 100 days.
You can trace the 100 day concept back to Napoleon Bonaparte….in that period he returned from exile, reinstated himself as the top man in Paris, went to war with the British and the Prussians and went down to ultimate defeat at Waterloo.
Now that was 100 days (111 to be precise).
But if the French were reeling from that brief period, it is as nothing compared to the first 27 days of the Trump Presidency in Washington.
I know I keep saying this, but what is happening here is utterly unprecedented.
Never before has a President, in the first month of his administration, faced that most classic of Washington questions: what did he know, and when did he know it.
The "it" relates to the President's contacts with Russia.
He woke up in the White House on Wednesday to discover that he is reaping what he sewed when he waged war on the country's intelligence agencies last year.
They are now leaking, sievelike, about their investigations into his election campaign.
And it's pretty clear their investigations are getting ever closer to him.
But I was particularly struck by what one of his top campaign aides said in an interview on Wednesday with the New York Times.
Paul Manafort, you may remember, was forced out of Donald Trump's inner circle during the election campaign …. accused of dodgy business dealings with pro-Russian leaders in Ukraine, and allegations of millions of dollars being paid to him n cash.
It seems the FBI has never stopped investigating Mr. Manafort who is one of four Trump campaign officials in the intelligence agency's crosshairs.
"I have never knowingly spoken to Russian intelligence officers" he told the New York Times, adding: "it's not like these people wear badges that say 'I'm a Russian intelligence officer'".
Now with all due respect to Mr. Manafort, I would like to suggest he's talking nonsense.
And one of the reasons I'm sure it's nonsense is because I'm sure I've spoken to Russian intelligence officers.
Many years ago, in the dying months of the Soviet Union, I was based in Russia….and was lucky enough to live in a flat right in the center of Moscow, on Pushkin Square.
It was, by local standards, a luxurious place to live….right above the first ever MacDonald's restaurant in Russia.
And to this day, on the side of the building there is plaque honoring a Soviet-era movie star who had lived in my very apartment.
Her name was Lyubov Orlova…she was one of Stalin's favorite starlets and the flat, when I rented it, was still filled with film canisters, production stills and awards that she had received.
One Sunday morning my doorbell rang.
And remember this was during a time when virtually all foreign reporters in Moscow were under routine surveillance, our telephone lines "clicking" mysteriously every time we used them.
I answered the door and discovered a very attractive young Russian woman standing on my doormat.
How she had gained access to the building I never discovered, but she told me that she was a big fan of Ms. Orlova and wanted to come in and see the flat.
Now, she wasn't wearing a badge that said I'm a Russian intelligence officer.
But I figured nonetheless that she might be….so I didn't let her in.
She left.
Then started phoning me.
Relentlessly….for weeks….insisting that she simply wanted to get to know me….further underscoring my fear that it wasn't just etchings of the film star that she wanted to glimpse.
I held the line…and eventually, she dropped it.
To this day, I don't know for sure that she was part of a Russian intelligence attempt to infiltrate my residence and put me in a compromising position….but while I possess an enormous degree of self confidence, generally speaking attractive Russian women weren't showing up on my doorstep on a daily basis.
So the notion that Mr. Manafort…Michael Flynn…or even perhaps President Trump himself could possibly not have known they were risking conversations with Russian intelligence is laughable.
And unfortunately for them, the FBI appears to have many of their interactions with the Russians on tape.
So the President can kiss goodbye to that 100 day honeymoon.
Perhaps he should be worrying instead about his own Waterloo.
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