The US intelligence community has concluded that Russia was involved in a multi-faceted attack on the integrity of our election, that included hacking various political entities in Washington, DC and the production and dissemination of "fake news" to confuse and wrongly influence American voters.

There is also growing concern about secret communications between members of the Trump campaign, and now-administration, and top officials of the Russian government.

Specifically, we recently learned that (now-former) White House National Security Adviser Michael Flynn lied to the American people about the content of his secret communications with the Russian ambassador during the transition; and there is now a report that Flynn may have encrypted some of those communications, in order to hide them from everyone, including US intelligence.

Even worse, the Washington Post is now reporting that the Trump administration was warned about Flynn's contacts with the Russians, and the fact that Flynn was lying about them, and could thus be subject to future blackmail from the Russians. And Trump did absolutely nothing about it. Was that because Flynn was acting on Trump's orders?

Also disturbing is Donald Trump's refusal to release any information about his financial, personal and political connections to Russia, while he repeatedly stakes out positions more in line with Russian than American national interests (such as repeatedly defending Putin's murder spree against political opponents and journalists).

As a result, there are recent reports that America's intelligence agencies no longer trust sharing their most classified intelligence with the Trump White House. If that's the case, then who is actually running our national security?

And now, the latest news is that Michael Flynn has been forced to resign over his secret contacts with the Russians. Who else knew that Flynn was talking to the Russians? Did Trump approve it? Did anyone else on staff know about it? It's difficult to believe that Flynn would "freelance" with the Russian ambassador, in multiple phone calls, without telling Trump. What did Trump know and when did he know it? We know at the very least that the White House was told about this weeks ago, and did nothing until the news went public. Only an independent investigation will answer those questions.

The integrity of our democracy and the safety of our country goes beyond partisan politics. Democrat or Republican, we are all united in demanding that no foreign power be permitted to co-opt our elections and our elected officials.

Please use this page to send your members of Congress an email urging them to create an independent and bipartisan commission to investigate Russian attempts to subvert our democracy.

Thank you. JOHN