Trump Calls for Logan Act Charge Against Kerry

This week, President Trump slammed former Secretary of State John Kerry (D) and called for his prosecution for discussing the Iran nuclear deal with Iranian officials after leaving office.

In addition, President Trump also accused Kerry of telling officials to not speak to any members of the Trump administration.

In a statement, President Trump argued that “John Kerry speaks to them a lot. John Kerry tells them not to call. That’s a violation of the Logan Act. And, frankly, he should be prosecuted on that.”

The President added that “people don’t want to do anything” about that, explaining that “only the Democrats do that kind of stuff, you know? If it were the opposite way, they’d prosecute him under the Logan act.”

If Kerry were to be prosecuted, this would be the third Logan Act charge in the history of the United States. One person was charged in 1803 and another person was charged in 1852 since the law was signed by President John Adams in 1799.

The Logan Act prohibits private citizens from negotiating on behalf of the United States without proper authorization to do so.

President Trump has accused Kerry many times of holding “illegal” meetings with Iranian officials, the most recent meeting taking place at the beginning of 2018 between Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif.

In September of last year, Kerry confirmed that he had met with Zarif “three or four times” since he left his Secretary of State position, but Kerry expressed that what he has “done is tried to elicit from him what Iran might be willing to do in order to change the dynamic in the Middle East for the better.”

In response to the President’s comments, a spokesman for Kerry detailed that the President is “wrong about the facts, wrong about the law, and sadly he’s been wrong about how to use diplomacy to keep America safe. Secretary Kerry helped negotiate a nuclear agreement that worked to solve an intractable problem.” Moreover, the spokesperson asserted that “the world supported it then and it supports it still. We’d hope the President would focus on solving foreign policy problems for America instead of attacking his predecessors for theater.”