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Flynn should not be tried under the Logan Act: Column David B. Rivkin, Jr. and Lee A. Casey 10:07 a.m. ET Feb. 24, 2017The law is an unconstitutional affront to free speech.Those gleefully claiming that retired Army lieutenant general Michael Flynn, after resigning as National Security Adviser, should be subject to investigation under the “Logan Act” need to actually read that law. It is obviously and profoundly unconstitutional.The Logan Act dates to 1799 and is a product, like the Alien and Sedition Acts, of the United States’ efforts to deal with one of its first great foreign policy crises, the French Revolution. That event divided Americans like no other since our own Revolution twenty years before, and destroyed for a time the long friendship of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.Prompted by an American citizen, George Logan, discussing U.S. policy with representatives of the French Revolutionary government, the law today criminalizes “any correspondence or intercourse” by a U.S. citizen wherever located, “with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States.”The Logan Act’s constitutionality has never been tested before the Supreme Court, but there is little doubt that it comes up short. Unlike the Espionage Act, for example, the Logan Act purports to regulate pure speech — efforts by any U.S. citizens to influence a foreign government or its officials — and does so in the broadest possible manner.Continued: http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/02/24/flynn-russia-logan-act-treason-first-amendment-column/98320684/
