Alan Dershowitz: Kerry Clearly Violated Logan Act by Interfering in Iran
President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he was withdrawing the United States from the much-maligned Iran nuclear agreement that was made during the Obama administration.
Leading up to that monumental decision, various members of the former administration took action in support of the deal, including former Secretary of State John Kerry, who met with his former counterpart in Iran — foreign minister Javad Zarif — both publicly and in secret, according to The Daily Caller.
Kerry also reportedly held meetings with high-level dignitaries in a number of European nations in order to convince them to pressure Trump not to withdraw from the deal.
That surreptitious activity earned Kerry a tweet of condemnation from Trump, who called out the former secretary’s “possibly illegal shadow diplomacy” in opposition to the agenda and policies of the Trump administration.
The United States does not need John Kerry’s possibly illegal Shadow Diplomacy on the very badly negotiated Iran Deal. He was the one that created this MESS in the first place!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 7, 2018
Trump’s “possibly illegal” remark is in reference to Kerry’s seeming violation of an obscure, rarely enforced, but often-referenced law known as the Logan Act, which prohibits private American citizens from engaging in diplomacy on their own.
Kerry’s “shadow diplomacy” in opposition to Trump’s administration was further confirmed by a statement from his own spokesman, who played it off as no big deal and merely the ordinary actions of a former diplomat staying in touch with his counterparts and expressing a personal opinion shared by many other Americans.
NEW: spokesman for @JohnKerry on “shadow diplomacy,” response to @realDonaldTrump tweet: pic.twitter.com/dVwVcsjM4f
— Brooke Singman (@BrookeSingman) May 7, 2018
But according to the Washington Examiner, Kerry’s “shadow diplomacy” was on its face a blatant violation of the Logan Act, as noted by liberal attorney and Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz.
“Fortunately for everybody, the Logan Act (is a) dead letter, but if it were in existence, my friend John Kerry would be violating the Logan Act,” Dershowitz said Saturday on Fox News. “He is negotiating, though he is not in the administration, and there are real problems with doing that.”
Kerry’s apparent Logan Act violation is also noteworthy in light of the fact that Democrats and their media allies cried foul about the same law during the transition period between Trump’s election and inauguration, specifically in regard to former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.
Recall that Flynn had been “outed” by Obama administration holdovers and the media for making contact with the Russian ambassador during that transition period.
But the cry of outraged liberals nevertheless led to Flynn’s resignation and now prosecution by the special counsel investigation for allegedly lying to FBI agents about his contact with the ambassador, an unfortunate outcome Dershowitz alluded to in his remarks about Kerry’s activity.
“John is a friend of mine. I’ve known him for a long, long time. But remember how this investigation against Trump begins,” Dershowitz said. “It begins by the theory that people in the Trump campaign may be violating the Logan Act, by going and speaking to people when they haven’t yet been president.”
Ironically — and rather hilariously — the Boston Herald has called for Kerry to be officially investigated for his own version of “colluding with nefarious foreign powers to undermine U.S. interests” in the same manner that liberals have howled about alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians.
If the Logan Act were to ever be enforced, Kerry was just got caught dead in clear violation of that law. If Republicans are wrong for supposedly violating that unenforced rule, then Democrats should be held to the same standard.
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