KERRY’S COLLUSION

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Power Line
Scott Johnson
May 5, 2018

John Kerry has colluded with the Iranian regime to preserve the Iran deal from its prospective undoing by the president of the United States. Matt Viser calls it “shadow diplomacy” in his Boston Globe article breaking the story. Isn’t this the kind of thing for which then Acting Attorney Sally Yates sicced the FBI on Michael Flynn? Because it allegedly violated the Logan Act? Why, yes, it is. (I requested a comment from Yates this morning via email.)

Yates won’t be talking to me, I’m pretty sure, but we can to turn to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes on this one. I’m with him.

OMG! Logan Act violations!! Send in the G Men… https://t.co/FA1dydJGQb

— Devin Nunes (@DevinNunes) May 4, 2018

More... http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/05/kerrys-collusion.php

[EasyAce]

I saw several articles on this earlier this morning.

I'm pretty sure we both know why Kerry isn't facing Logan Act charges yet and probably won't.

[endicom]

I saw several articles on this earlier this morning.

I'm pretty sure we both know why Kerry isn't facing Logan Act charges yet and probably won't.

The story is that no one has yet been convicted of a Logan Act violation so the point to bringing it up is just to reveal the treachery.

[EasyAce]

The story is that no one has yet been convicted of a Logan Act violation so the point to bringing it up is just to reveal the treachery.

Now, I wonder . . . has anyone ever been brought up on formal charges of violating the act?

[Cyber Liberty]

Now, I wonder . . . has anyone ever been brought up on formal charges of violating the act?

I'm sure your question is rhetorical, but there is an answer.  Two, and neither was convicted.  From Wiki:

Only two indictments have ever been handed down under the Logan Act. The first occurred in 1803 when a grand jury indicted Francis Flournoy, a Kentucky farmer, who had written an article in the Frankfort Guardian of Freedom under the pen name of "A Western American." In the article, Flournoy advocated a separate nation in the western part of the United States that would ally with France. The United States Attorney for Kentucky, an Adams appointee and brother-in-law of Chief Justice John Marshall, went no further than procuring the indictment of Flournoy, and there was no further prosecution of the Kentucky farmer. The purchase of the Louisiana Territory later that year appeared to cause the separatism issue to become moot, and the case was abandoned.[2][10]

In 1852, Jonas Phillips Levy became the second, and to this day the last person to be indicted under the Logan Act. Levy, an American merchant and sailor who was living in Mexico at the time, had acquired a grant to build a railway across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the narrowest point across Mexico. Secretary of State Daniel Webster had been pressuring Mexico to accept a treaty that would allow a different group of American businessmen to build the railway. Levy wrote a letter to Mexican President Mariano Arista urging him to reject Webster’s proposed treaty, prompting Webster to seek an indictment against Levy for violating the Logan Act. Federal prosecutors were forced to dismiss the case after Arista refused to hand over the original copy of the letter, depriving them of the evidence they needed to convict Levy.[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan_Act

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Only two indictments have ever been handed down under the Logan Act. The first occurred in 1803 when a grand jury indicted Francis Flournoy, a Kentucky farmer, who had written an article in the Frankfort Guardian of Freedom under the pen name of "A Western American." In the article, Flournoy advocated a separate nation in the western part of the United States that would ally with France. The United States Attorney for Kentucky, an Adams appointee and brother-in-law of Chief Justice John Marshall, went no further than procuring the indictment of Flournoy, and there was no further prosecution of the Kentucky farmer. The purchase of the Louisiana Territory later that year appeared to cause the separatism issue to become moot, and the case was abandoned.[2][10]

This looks like the sort of discretion that Andrew McCarthy gets in to. There were bigger, overriding issues involved so dogging Flournoy made no sense.

[EasyAce]

@Cyber Liberty
Thanks for the information. But considering the specific purpose and language of the Logan Act, even indicting Francis Flournoy seems an exercise in futility since he did nothing more than write an opinion in a newspaper. He doesn't appear to have been in any position to talk to any French government official about the concept; he hadn't done as George Logan, who actually did meet with French officials five years before Flournoy wrote his article, which inspired the Logan Act in the first place.

[dfwgator]

So "Collusion" is the new word for "Treason"?

[Cyber Liberty]

@Cyber Liberty
Thanks for the information. But considering the specific purpose and language of the Logan Act, even indicting Francis Flournoy seems an exercise in futility since he did nothing more than write an opinion in a newspaper. He doesn't appear to have been in any position to talk to any French government official about the concept; he hadn't done as George Logan, who actually did meet with French officials five years before Flournoy wrote his article, which inspired the Logan Act in the first place.

The case of Flournoy was was rendered moot by the Louisiana Purchase, anyway.

All true.  What's amazing is the lack of interest in this act over the past half century or so.  Ted Kennedy flagrantly violated it trying to convince Iran to continue holding hostages. A number of Congresscreeps met with Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua to counter Reagan's plans.  Jimmy Carter did so with the North Koreans during Clinton's Presidency.  Kerry himself could have been credibly charged for his actions with the North Vietnamese in Paris in 1971 (which was probably the most egregious of these).   These are only off the top of my head.

Logan was written to address exactly these actions, yet nothing ever happened.  What Kerry is pulling now is rather mild in comparison to other cases of Democrat meddling in recent decades.