Just a few questions, Mr President . . .

The 49 questions that the special counsel, Robert Mueller, hopes to ask President Trump as part of the year-long Russia investigation suggest that Mueller knows a great deal more than he’s letting on — and he hasn’t even gotten to the follow-ups yet.

After the questions were provided to Trump’s legal team in March, John Dowd, Trump’s lead personal lawyer at the time, urged him to avoid sitting for an interview with Mueller. When Trump said he intended to anyway, Dowd resigned.

Reading through the list, it’s clear why Dowd was so concerned. If Trump agrees to speak with Mueller’s team, he will have to answer some very basic questions about what he knew, when he knew it and what motivated some of his most shocking and inexplicable actions over the past year. To name just a few: When and why did you decide to fire James Comey, the FBI director, who was leading the Russia investigation at the time? What did you mean when you told NBC’s Lester Holt that you fired Comey because ‘‘this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story’’? Did you try to persuade the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to protect you from the investigation? Whatever information he has, Mueller, like any seasoned prosecutor, does not ask questions unless he already knows the answers. Whether or not Trump decides to talk to him, the rest of us will know, too, soon enough.