Secretary of State

Kerry Should Be Prosecuted For Illegal Iran Meetings

9/14/18
from Investors Business Daily,
9/13/18:

Another Democrat act of hypocrisy.

Recent comments by former Democratic presidential candidate, Secretary of State and Senator John Kerry lead to one inevitable conclusion: Making Kerry America's top diplomat was a huge error.

Kerry has been seen a lot lately, largely because he's flogging a book, "Every Day Is Extra," seemingly everywhere in the media. He's doing lots of live interviews, some of them quite telling. In one, for instance, he calls President Donald Trump's time in office a matter of "life and death," and suggests that he would "bring a case against Donald Trump for the lives that will be lost" due to his presidency. Lives lost to what? Some foreign war? Failure to protect us from terrorism? Nope. Global warming. A purely hypothetical threat. That's bad enough. It shows such poor judgment and extreme bias that Kerry should never hold a federal position of power ever again. But far worse is his admission that he met "three or four times" with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif since Kerry left office. He admits talking about Trump's decision to exit the foolish Iran nuclear deal that Kerry helped craft, and other issues as well. And he didn't deny that he encouraged Iran to simply wait for Trump to leave office and a Democrat to come before taking any major actions.

"What I have 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," he told Fox News' Special Report. As has been noted before, this is a plain violation of the Logan Act, the 199-year-old law that forbids private American citizens from conducting foreign policy without authorization. No one has ever been prosecuted under the law, largely because it was never really intended for that. It was meant to send a message to private citizens to butt out when it comes to diplomacy and foreign affairs. But Kerry's interference comes as close to being prosecutable under the Logan Act as anything we've seen. Not only did he circumvent a lawfully elected government's official channels, but he did so with the intent of undoing a specific policy, namely the U.S. sanctions on Iran for violating its nuclear agreements. It's an act of hypocrisy, given that Democrats last year suggested that Ret. Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser, had violated the law by talking with Russian officials about a month after Trump was elected in November 2016. This is plainly not a violation, since he was an official in an incoming administration. But Democrats didn't care.

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