The Logan Act, Nixon, and the Current President

The Logan Act, in place since 1799, is a federal law intended to prevent unauthorized individuals from meddling with foreign governments which are having a dispute with the United States. The Act was passed following unauthorized negotiations by George Logan, a Pennsylvania legislator, with France in 1798 during the Quasi-War between the U.S. and France. The Logan Act was signed into law by President John Adams the following year. Violation of the Logan Act is a felony.  To date, nobody has been prosecuted for violations of this law.

The text of the law is 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.”

Richard Nixon’s paranoia as president is equaled only by the current occupant of the Oval Office.  During the 1968 presidential election, Anna Chennault (a Nixon supporter) contacted the South Vietnamese ambassador to the U.S., Bui Diem.  The current president, Lyndon Johnson, was trying to set a peace treaty to end the Vietnam War.  Through Chennault’s intervention, Diem persuaded the South Vietnamese government to hold off in participating in treaty negotiations.  She told Diem that if Nixon won the election, South Vietnam would end up having a better deal in a peace treaty than would be had under the Johnson administration.  Peace talks stalled until 1975.  The treaty that was signed then was essentially the same as the one proposed by LBJ.  South Vietnam didn’t get a better deal and over 20,000 American soldiers died from 1969-1975.

Fast forward to the current presidential administration.  Mike Flynn, National Security Advisor fired by the current president, contacted Russian ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 presidential campaign shortly after the Obama administration imposed sanctions on the Russian government over their meddling in the presidential election.  That contact, according to U.S. intelligence sources, discussed the possibility of the sanctions being lifted if Hillary Clinton lost the election.  Flynn wasn’t fired specifically because of that contact with Kislyak, but because he misled the new administration about those discussions.

Now we get to Attorney General Jeff Sessions.  He is suspected of meeting with Kislyak and possibly other Russian officials during the 2016 campaign.  At the time, Sessions was a U.S. Senator from Alabama and a prominent supporter of Clinton’s opponent.  Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio are among Republicans in Congress calling for Sessions to recuse himself from investigations into those Russian contacts.  It appears that Sessions lied (or misled, whichever term you prefer) about those contacts during his confirmation hearings for the Attorney General post.

The administration of He Who Must Not Be Named is a little over a month old and is already shaping up as potentially one of the dirtiest in American history.  If it’s this bad now, how bad will it be at the end of this term?  That supposes that he will not be impeached before his term ends.

~ Posted by Exile in Oregon, Medford OR