Ask Your Elected Officials to Support a Vigorous Investigation of Michael Flynn’s Dealings with Russia.

Adam D. Zolkover
Dear Leaders
Published in
2 min readFeb 15, 2017

This call script pertains to the revelation that after the election but before the inauguration, President Trump’s incoming national security advisor Michael Flynn spoke with the Russian ambassador to the United States, and assured him that Obama-era sanctions, including sanctions related to Russia’s role in attempting to influence the presidential election, would likely soon be lifted.

That in itself is a violation of ethics and convention, if not a violation of the Logan Act. But General Flynn also lied about it to the Vice President of the United States, and possibly also to the FBI.

Reportedly, President Trump knew about all of this for weeks — he had been informed by fired interim Attorney General Sally Yates — and he did nothing until the media broke the story.

This is far more serious than any Obama-era national security crisis that we know of, and deserves at least as much attention as the so-called Fast and Furious scandal, or Benghazi, or Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of information in her emails as secretary of state.

Call your elected officials. Tell them that it is a matter of public interest that they demand a full, and preferably independent, investigation.

Hello [Senator|Representative] [name]. My name is [name] and I am one of your constituents in [place], [zip]. My phone number is [phone], but I don’t need a call back.

I am calling today to ask you to support a vigorous investigation into what the Trump administration knew, and when they knew it, about Michael Flynn’s discussion of the lifting of sanctions with the Russian ambassador before President Trump took office. This is not a question of partisan politics, but rather a question that is imperative to the health of our democracy.

If members of an incoming administration attempt to undermine an existing administration’s foreign policy aims, that is ethically, if not legally, out of line. If a key national security advisor misleads the President for whom he works, that suggests serious problems within the executive branch. And if a member of an incoming administration puts himself in a position where he is open to blackmail by a foreign power, that is unforgivably negligent.

The American people deserve to know that their interests are being represented in the United States’s dealings with Russia and every other foreign power. And the only way to do that is through a public, preferably independent, investigation. So please support just that.

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Adam D. Zolkover
Dear Leaders

Folklorist, among other things. Interested in politics, civility, tolerance, social justice, and pastry.