Former Secretary of State John Kerry recently met with Palestinian official Hussein Agha, and promised him that he would use all of his contacts to get support for a Palestinian “peace plan.” He also told Agha that Palestinian Leader Mahmoud Abbas, angry with President Donald Trump for moving the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, should just ignore Trump.
Many have made the obvious conclusion that Kerry has violated the Logan Act, a U.S. law that makes it a felony for unauthorized person to negotiate with foreign governments having a dispute with the United States.
The act was passed when Quaker George Logan, a pacifist, negotiated with France in 1798, in an effort to end the Quasi-War then raging between that country and the United States.
Only two individuals have ever been indicted for violating the Logan Act (which may mean that it has been successful in its intent), and no person has ever been convicted under its provisions. But prosecution has been called for at various times in American history.
In fact, the New York Times wrote early last year that Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, when he acknowledged that he had communicated with the Russian ambassador to the United States (after the election) left “little doubt that [Flynn] had also violated a federal criminal statute known as the Logan Act.”
Out of curiosity, I searched for any similar Times articles which called out Kerry for also violating the Logan Act. I found nothing. Perhaps the Times has run front-page stories calling for Kerry’s indictment, and the search engines have all missed it, but I doubt it.
In the case of Flynn, Trump was going to take over as president in a few days, and Flynn was making an effort to soothe relations with the Russian government, relations that had become very frayed under the outgoing Obama administration. In other words, Flynn was attempting to better relations with a nation that the incoming Trump administration would need to deal with.
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