From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro.

This is The Day.

Today, at the start of 2018, the biggest threat to the Trump presence

was an investigation into his campaign's ties to Russia.

As the year draws to a close, it's his hush payments to women.

Mike Schmidt and Mark Mazzetti on the story behind that change

and how the threat is likely to change again next year.

It's Tuesday, December 18.

Mark, at this time last year, you had just spent the first year

of the Trump administration editing all of the Russia coverage

that we did about the investigation, whether there was collusion,

the appointment of Mueller.

At the end of the year, you came back to being a reporter

and the story of the investigations into Donald Trump

is focused on two things, on collusion and obstruction.

Those are the two things that we were looking at.

Right.

We had spent the first year of the Russian investigation

compiling this sort of catalog of contacts

between the Trump team and Russians of different stripes.

And we didn't know then where those pieces fit together

with or had added up to any kind of conspiracy.

...