It will take a crowbar to pry the truth from Donald Trump.

And that’s why we need a series of congressional investigations to look into possible financial dealings or other entanglements Trump may have involving Russia, and any contact his campaign or its intermediaries may have had with Russian operatives or intermediaries.

Wednesday’s press conference found Trump in obfuscation mode on all that, fuming, filibustering, and reframing, ducking, dodging, and evading. The president-elect and his team also lashed out at CNN under such patently false pretenses that it was hard not to conclude that their goal was to gull his base into thinking the cable news network had treated him unfairly.

The matter that aroused Trump’s ire: news that a recent intelligence briefing he received included information about a political opposition research document with explosive but unsubstantiated allegations. CNN reported that that presentation “included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump.’’ BuzzFeed published the document itself, with salacious, unsubstantiated allegations.

Now, one needn’t be a conspiracy theorist to find odd the way that Trump has had to be dragged into a begrudging acknowledgment that Russia was behind the hacking of the DNC’s and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s e-mails. Add in Trump’s public admiration for Vladimir Putin, his willingness to overlook or excuse Russia’s brutal behavior, and the Russophiles in his inner circle, and one is left wondering whether the incoming president is capable of clear-sightedness about that nation.

His press conference only added to those doubts. Asked if he accepted the conclusion that Putin had ordered the hack to help him win, Trump had this to say: “If Putin likes Donald Trump, guess what, folks? That’s called an asset, not a liability.’’ He denied any loans from Russia or business deals there, but once again refused to release his tax returns, which could cast some light on that.

When a reporter asked, in a multi-part question, if Trump could offer assurances that no one connected with him or his campaign had any contact with Russia up to and during the campaign, Trump answered a different aspect of the question. It’s worth noting that in November, Russian foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said there had been such contacts, though his ministry subsequently revised that statement. The uncorroborated opposition research also contends there were information exchanges.

One way to pursue reliable answers to all that is through a full congressional inquiry. So will there be hearings? House Oversight Committee chairman Jason Chaffetz, who had two years of prospective investigations of Hillary Clinton lined up, seems unenthusiastic.

“Um, well, the president-elect has done his financial disclosure, which he is required to do by law, but he is exempt from the conflict-of-interest issue,’’ he told me. When I noted that Walter M. Shaub Jr., director of the Office of Government Ethics, had said Trump’s plan was “wholly inadequate’’ — a point other ethics watchdogs have also made — Chaffetz as much as shrugged. “I don’t know how he [Shaub] could be in the spin room so quickly when he hasn’t seen any of the details,’’ he said.

The would-be watchdogs aren’t quite as sleepy in the Senate. Yes, majority leader Mitch McConnell has rejected a call for a new panel to look specifically at Russian meddling in the US presidential election, but McConnell spokesman Don Stewart notes that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is probing the matter.

“All that is already underway,’’ he says. It could, of course, be underway in a much higher profile way, but still.

Trump & Company obviously hope to dismiss all this as much ado about nothing. But the matter of what Russia did to help Trump, whether any Trump operatives or associates were in contact with Russian operatives, and whether the president-elect has any possible conflicts, requires further attention.

Americans need answers they can trust.

Scot Lehigh can be reached at lehigh@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeScotLehigh.