Today we are looking directly into the face of government anarchy and the hypocrisy by the Left in the U.S. that we’ve always known but have never before seen it so blatantly thrown into the faces of the American public. Three U.S. Senators and a former Secretary of State have purposely and secretly been meeting with the Foreign Minister of the country named by the U.S. as the leading promoter of terrorism on Earth: Iran.
I thought our government is at odds with Iran. Isn’t Iran the #1 funder of terrorist activities all around the world? Are not the streets of Tehran filled with Iranians most weekends demonstrating against the U.S., stomping on and burning our flag while yelling, “Death to Americans?” Why would our government secretly send a group of U.S. Senators to negotiate with Iran’s foreign minister?
The answer: Our government DIDN’T send them! They went on their own with no conversations with our State Department or coordination with anyone else in the Trump Administration.
Those senators led by Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut secretly met Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif in Germany during the Munich Security Conference over the weekend, according to U.S.-based news outlet The Federalist. According to senior editor Mollie Hemingway, whose tweets are occasionally retweeted by PresidentTrump, the report cited a high-level source briefed by a French delegation to the event.
“Chris Murphy and other Democratic Senators held a secret meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif last week, a high-level source reports. His office is not responding to repeated requests for comment,” tweeted Hemingway.
In her report, she said, “A State Department official who spoke on background said that the State Department was not aware of any side meetings with Iranian officials in which Murphy was engaged. Such a meeting would mean Murphy had done the type of secret coordination with foreign leaders to potentially undermine the U.S. government that he accused Trump officials of doing as they prepared for Trump’s administration,” Hemingway said.
Senators Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, as well as former Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, also attended the event.
During the event on Saturday, both Murphy and Zarif publicly discussed and grilled U.S. policies on the Middle East at a two-hour-session.
The 56th Munich Security Conference took place on February 14-16. For three days, the conference was at the center of international diplomacy and welcomed world leaders from politics, academia, and civil society.
More about those Senators in a bit…
Former Secretary of State John Kerry admitted that he’s met with top Iranian officials in hopes of salvaging the scrapped nuclear deal — as he slammed the Trump administration for trying to further “isolate” Iran.
The one-time presidential candidate said he’s sat down with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif “three or four times” in places including Norway and Munich since leaving office.
“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,” Kerry explained in an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt. “What do you do to try to get peace in Syria? I mean, those are the things that really are preoccupying, because those are the impediments to people, to Iran’s ability to convince people that it’s ready to embrace something different.”
Background
Constitutional experts have argued for decades about who in the U.S. government has power over foreign policy. Regarding “normal” policy matters, the President has always handled such matters. But when differences result in matters of military actions, Congress has the sole power from the War Powers Act to declare war.
Past Presidents have skirted the War Powers Act when they initiated American military intervention in foreign countries. Obama went to Libya with no Congressional approval. Just as a note: that action in Libya resulted in the deaths of four Americans at the Benghazi consulate. Obama took solo actions regarding Syria and ISIS. Bush 43 in ,the shadow of the New York twin-towers rubble, went to Congress for permission to take-on Saadam Hussein in Iraq.
Those are not “normal” foreign policy matters. But they certainly are about foreign policy. All-out war definitely falls under the direction of Congress.
There have been historical interventions into foreign policy matters by others than the current President. Doing so is very dangerous, especially in light of the tenuous relationships that currently and for many years have existed between the U.S. and North Korea, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran. One would think all those in government would be careful about any and all actions either Congress or the Administration take directly with those countries and surely would alert the other Branch in advance of such actions.
Few realize there is a U.S. federal law that prohibits such actions by those unauthorized to do so from happening: The Logan Act.
The Logan Act
The Logan Act has remained almost unchanged and unused since its passage. The act is short and reads as follows:
Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse 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, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
This section shall not abridge the right of a citizen to apply, himself or his agent, to any foreign government or the agents thereof for redress of any injury which he may have sustained from such government or any of its agents or subjects.
The language of the act appears to encompass almost every communication between a U.S. citizen and a foreign government considered an attempt to influence negotiations between their two countries. Because the language is so broad in scope, legal scholars and judges have suggested that the Logan Act is unconstitutional. Historically, the act has been used more as a threat to those engaged in various political activities than as a weapon for prosecution. In fact, Logan Act violations have been discussed in almost every administration without any serious attempt at enforcement, and to date, there have been no convictions and only one recorded indictment.
One example of the act’s use as a threat of prosecution involved the Reverend Jesse Jackson. In 1984, Jackson took well-publicized trips to Cuba and Nicaragua and returned with several Cuban political prisoners seeking asylum in the United States. President Ronald Reagan stated that Jackson’s activities may have violated the law, but Jackson was not pursued beyond a threat.
The only Logan Act indictment occurred in 1803. It involved a Kentucky newspaper article that argued for the formation in the western United States of a separate nation allied to France. No prosecution followed.
Do you see any potential conflict with this law that seems to have stepped cross the line?
Senators Chris Murphy, Robert Menendez, and Chris Van Hollen certainly are concerned about U.S. relations with the nation of Iran. They were each in full support of President Obama’s Nuclear Agreement with Iran to prevent Iran from, voluntarily, further pursuing nuclear weapons. But that’s not the job of a small group of American Senators.
I have huge problems with what these three Senators and John Kerry did on their own, and Kerry multiple times.
How does the U.S. historically acts to set foreign policy with countries when negotiations become serious and require formal U.S. action. We use treaties. We negotiate treaties to accomplish two things: make certain leaders in both countries are clear on the obligations of each, and to set by agreement the terms and conditions for compliance that includes actions that WILL result from any violation of the treaty.
Barack Obama was adamantly in support of Iran. He worked on that Nuclear Agreement for a long time. If it was meant to be a permanent agreement, then why did Obama not bring the agreement to the Senate to be ratified as an official treaty? I have my thoughts, but my thoughts are opinion. In this case, all that matters is that there is no treaty with Iran. If there was so much concern by those Obama Democrats about permanently preventing nuclear development by Iran, why did the Obama Administration not seek a permanent fix: a treaty?
It’s important to note that the U.S. entered the Nuclear Agreement solely by the executive action of President Obama. Congress was not part of the process. That apparently was OK with those Senators and other Democrats. But the mysterious and secret details negotiated by Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry included $150 Billion dollars released to Iran. That decision was made without Congress even knowing about it. And the last $400 million was sent to Tehran on a U.S. private jet — IN CASH!
That smelled to Americans. The stench of that transaction and the subsequent discovery that the Nuclear Iran deal that was supposed to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons only slowed them down for a few years. It never was agreed that they would forever cease their nuclear military programs.
On another note regarding these Senators meeting with Iranians, Sen. Murphy is heavily involved with the lobbying group, the National Iranian American Council, a group that has ties directly to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Republican Senators Braun, Cotton, and Cruz have requested that the Department of Justice investigate the group for violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
The Braun, Cotton, and Cruz Senators wrote to Murphy, Van Hollen and Menendez about their meetings with Iranians calling those meetings “interactions that purport to improve understanding between American and Iranian people but in reality, seem to spread propaganda and lobby on behalf of the Iranian government.”
There is also evidence to support that Zarif founded the group himself.
Summary
I am going to cut right to the chase: it is my opinion based on my understanding from the plain language of the Logan Act that former Secretary of State John Kerry, Senators Chris Murphy, Chris Van Hollen, and Robert Menendez have committed felony acts by breaking the terms of the Logan Act:
“Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse 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, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
We Americans are NOT stupid — we can read. There is no doubt in my mind that Kerry and the Senators met in Iran with intent to influence the conduct of members of the Iran government. And they had NO authorizations to take such actions.
And Kerry has met by himself previously wit,h Zarif to apologize for President Trump. Kerry even told Zarif that (paraphrased), “He won’t be in office for too long. We’ll get this all straight and the Agreement put back in place with the next election.”
What Kerry and these Senators have done is exactly what numerous previous Americans have been convicted of, several of which are in prison today. For any American to legally be in meetings and discussions with leaders of foreign agents, they must be registered with the U.S. State Department before conducting any meetings. These four politicians did NOT register as agents. They should pay the same price for their wrongdoing as have so many other Americans.
I have always held respect for the offices held by those in government over me. In this case, I think all these Senators and Kerry by doing what they’ve done are not just guilty of that one felony offense, I feel their actions arguably are acts of treason.
Some will say, “The Constitution does not preclude Senators from taking such actions, so their doing so is not illegal.”
That’s exactly why CONGRESS passed the Logan Act! Their meeting with Zarif is criminal.
Congress — who holds the exclusive power to craft and pass laws in the U.S. — passed The Logan Act telling everyone not to collude with foreign governments about matters between the U.S. and those other countries. It seems that doing so did not just get started. Apparently one of these and two OTHER U.S. Senators also stuck their noses into Ukrainian matters back in 2018. A letter was delivered to Ukraine from Washington by Sens. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, Richard Durbin of Illinois and Patrick Leahy of Vermont, expressly asking a Ukraine prosecutor if he were fully cooperating with then-special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged “collusion” between Russia and the Trump 2016 campaign.
Once again, we ask: “Where is the Department of Justice on this matter? Where is the FBI?”
Or is it simply that current and past members of Congress are immune to the laws THEY pass? Are they better than other Americans?
What they did is NO different than any American — ANY American — approaching a foreign government to discuss specifics of the political relationship between that country and the U.S.
Americans are tired of having to point to the obvious evidence of their being a “two-tiered” system of Justice in the United States: one that applies to members of the federal government and their minions and one that applies to everyone else.
“Equal justice under the law” Where did it go?
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What is being done about this? Any updates on how Congress and the Administration are handling this?