Remember when incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn was accused of violating the Logan Act for having a conversation with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak? Keep in mind that this was AFTER Trump had been elected and the FBI used that as a pretense to interview, catch him in a perjury trap and make his life Hell for years? Well, if the arguably constitutional Logan Act, which bans Americans from engaging in unauthorized negotiations with foreign powers in a dispute with the United States means anything, then very clearly John Kerry and other Biden administration officials violated it by negotiating with Iran while Trump was President.
As the Washington Times notes, Obama administration officials were colluding with Iran to try to figure out how to undercut the Trump administration.
President Trump in 2019 sought to open a backchannel of communication with top Iranian officials and saw the U.N. General Assembly meeting in September as a potential opportunity to defuse escalating tension with Tehran, but the effort failed.
Two months earlier, however, a different back channel was thriving in New York. Iran’s smooth, English-speaking foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, met with Robert Malley, who was President Obama’s Middle East adviser, in an apparent bid to undermine the Trump team and lay the groundwork for post-Trump relations.
The attempt at counterdiplomacy offers a window into the deep relationships Mr. Zarif forged with influential U.S. liberals over the past decade. These relationships blossomed into what high-level national security and intelligence sources say allowed the Iranian regime to bypass Mr. Trump and work directly with Obama administration veterans that Tehran hoped would soon return to power in Washington.
One of those was former Secretary of State John F. Kerry, who met with Mr. Zarif during the Trump years. So did Obama-era Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. They, along with Mr. Malley, were top U.S. negotiators of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). As part of the deal, Tehran promised to limit its nuclear enrichment activities in exchange for economic sanctions relief and access to tens of billions of dollars in frozen bank accounts.
…The underlying goals of Mr. Zarif’s meetings, the official said, was “to devise a political strategy to undermine the Trump administration” and to continue building up a reservoir of support for the JCPOA, or another deal like it, that could be drawn up if a Democrat returned to the White House in 2021.
It’s amazing how selectively the law is applied in America. If you’re a Republican in politics, they’re going to go beyond the letter of the law to look for a way to stick it to you. If you’re a Democrat in politics, the idea that you should have to obey those silly old laws is ridiculous. You get a free pass to break the law with impunity. It’s the same in this case. Was the FBI looking into this troubling development? Were they questioning Kerry about it? There certainly haven’t been news stories about it if they were. Are people asking if it’s appropriate for John Kerry (among others) to be working for the Biden Administration after this? Hint: It’s not. He should be drummed out of politics over this. A Democrat who works with a hostile foreign power to undermine a Republican administration is someone who belongs in jail, not in government.
John Hawkins is the author of 101 Things All Young Adults Should Know
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