Below is my column in The Hill on a largely overlooked part of the recent material to be released in the Flynn case as well as the testimony released by the House Intelligence Committee: the focus on the Logan Act as the way to charge former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Indeed, I recently disagreed with former President Barack Obama on clearly false legal statements made about the Flynn case. However, within those false statements was a crushing irony. Obama is mentioned in the documents as discussing the use of the Logan Act against Flynn. While Obama decried (falsely) the lack of precedent for the dismissal of the Flynn case, he previously discussed the use of a clearly unconstitutional statute against Flynn that has never been used successfully to convict a single person since the start of the Republic.
Samuel Johnson famously once declared that “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” For prosecutors, that refuge is the Logan Act. Among the thousands of pages released from the Michael Flynn case and the House Intelligence Committee investigation is the prominent appearance of the Logan Act in high-level discussions. The law is widely viewed as a grossly unconstitutional law that, if ever actually used, would gut the First Amendment. Yet the record now shows the Logan Act became the last refuge for Justice Department officials in desperately trying to find a crime, any crime, to use against Flynn, the former national security adviser to President Trump.
I have written about the Logan Act for decades and called for its repeal. It is not that the law was a real threat to individuals, as it has never been used successfully against any citizen since its enactment in 1799. Rather, it is an act that contradicts the defining values of this country. The law was a product of its time, as John Adams was never one to suffer opponents gladly.
At the time, Adams favored and signed a treaty with Great Britain that led to the Quasi War with France. The Jeffersonians favored France, and one of them, George Logan of Philadelphia, went to Paris to try to end the hostilities. Adams was irate over what he called the “temerity and impertinence of individuals” such as Logan. He persuaded Congress to pass the flagrantly unconstitutional act, making it a crime to have “correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent” about disputes. The same Congress passed the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts used to arrest opponents of Adams, including journalists.
The only reason the Logan Act remains on the books is that it is treated as a harmless relic. Many of us in the free speech community have long objected that the law continues to be cited as a threat and remains a statutory monstrosity from one of the darkest periods of American law. Even those who dismiss the Logan Act as a nonentity generally agree that it could not be used constitutionally.
That brings us back to the recently released documents. We now know that, in late 2016, investigators completed their multiagency probe of Flynn, code-named Crossfire Razor, and found no evidence of any crime. They informed FBI and Justice Department leadership that they wanted to close the investigation for failure to find any “derogatory information.” The FBI Washington field office concluded that Flynn “was no longer a viable candidate as part of the larger Crossfire Hurricane umbrella case.”
We know now that former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe decided that the absence of any crime would not be allowed to terminate the investigation. FBI special agent Peter Strzok instructed the FBI case manager to keep the investigation open and then sent a celebratory text to FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who responded, “Phew. But yeah that’s amazing that he is still open.”
The problem, of course, is that there remained the inconvenient absence of any crime. Indeed, we now know there never was any credible evidence of collusion with the Russians by Trump campaign officials. New transcripts show dozens of officials confirming they never saw evidence of collusion. That is when the FBI and Justice Department leadership collectively reached for the last refuge of the prosecutorial scoundrel: the Logan Act.
When Strzok overruled the career prosecutors and investigators to keep open the investigation, he immediately raised the Logan Act as a possible way to charge Flynn. We previously learned that former acting Attorney General Sally Yates also raised the Logan Act as a possible charge, and we know that McCabe pushed the Logan Act in the absence of any other crime. (McCabe was later found to have lied to investigators but, unlike Flynn, was never charged).
The new material shows that former FBI Director James Comey also raised the Logan Act, with President Obama, in discussing FBI surveillance of Flynn. In one meeting, Justice Department officials were surprised that Obama already knew of the surveillance even though Yates was not aware of the facts. One document states, “Yates had no idea what the president was talking about, but figured it out based on the conversation. Yates recalled Comey mentioning the Logan Act.”
Keep in mind that the use of the Logan Act against the incoming national security adviser would have been not only patently unconstitutional but positively ludicrous. There was nothing illegal in Flynn responding to Russian diplomats upset about sanctions recently imposed against Russia, just days before the start of the Trump administration. Trump himself stated publicly that he wanted to reframe relations with Russia, including sanctions. The transcripts show Flynn encouraging the Russians not to retaliate and saying the administration would reexamine the relationship.
Consider the absurdity of using this law against the incoming adviser for speaking with foreign diplomats on the eve of the new administration. The use of the Logan Act in that instance is just slightly better than an Alien and Sedition Acts prosecution against WikiLeaks. We now know there never was evidence of collusion by Flynn or anyone in the Trump campaign. By December, career investigators in the FBI Washington field office wanted to stop investigating Flynn. Then, in January, every one of the major players at the FBI and the Justice Department justified further investigation under the Logan Act. Thus, the only crime being pushed was an unconstitutional act that has never been used successfully in a prosecution.
It turned out that they would not need it, however. Although FBI investigators said they did not believe Flynn intentionally lied (and noted that Flynn understood his conversation with Russian officials was monitored and presumably transcripted), that nevertheless was the charge former special counsel Robert Mueller ultimately used. Flynn fought the charges but pleaded guilty after Mueller virtually bankrupted him and threatened to charge his son.
Perhaps it is fitting that these Obama administration officials turned to the Logan Act. Obama, who had dismissed Flynn from another post, opposed his appointment as national security adviser. It did not matter if there was no evidence against Flynn. As President Adams declared in calling for enactment of the Logan Act, there must be punishment for those with the “temerity and impertinence” to challenge those in power.
So after no evidence of collusion or a crime by Flynn was found by the end of 2016, Strzok, McCabe, Comey, Yates and perhaps even Obama retreated to that last refuge of the prosecutorial scoundrel, the Logan Act, under the apparent theory that an unconstitutional crime is still better than no crime at all.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. You can find his updates online @JonathanTurley.
Professor Turley, a lifelong Democrat, just all but called Obama the “Scoundrel in Chief.” That, in and of itself, is stunning. Very un-Turley like.
Ivan– I think it is like Professor Turley. He is intellectually honest regardless of party.
If you’re going to form an opinion on the DOJ’s motion to dismiss the case against Michael Flynn, you owe it to yourself to at least read the DOJ’s statement of facts about why this investigation was such a sham. Jim Comey was systematically corrupt:
Glenn Greenwald
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1258530381806006273
Anderson Cooper asked felon Comey something like: “When you visited Pres. Trump to advise him about the Steele Dosier, did it occur to you that you should advise Trump that Hillary and the DNC financed it?”
Felon Comey huffs, rolls his eyes, like what a silly Q: “No.”
Just invert this whole sordid felonious affair, make it the Bush Admin and all his henchmen doing this to the Obungo Admin a few weeks after being sworn in.
Comey et. all would already have been executed for sedition, which Comey et. all richly deserve. But no, Comey makes a couple hundred K annually teaching “ethics” at university.
In some kind of bizarre, 1984-like erasure of the truth, Andrew Young went, without permission, to Iran to try to negotiate for the hostages held there. Can you find a reference to that anywhere? I distinctly remember seeing it on CBS News and hoping he would succeed…and yet, there was NEVER ANOTHER WORD SAID about him or the effort after that one evening news report. Would he not have been subject to the Logan Act? And, there was an Idaho Congressman who did the same thing. No one ever brought up the Logan Act then. Obama is a criminal.
Happy to see that the mask finally coming off that sneak, Obama. He must have imagined himself mighty important to believe his foreign policy failures should survive after he was out of office, and send the FBI to secure that goal. What a narcissist.
Well put. Indeed. One of the best retired FBI Prosecutors/Investigators said last week on Fox, that one of Obungo’s prime motivations for his sedition was to maintain his policies after Trump won. The less power Trump had, the more likely Obungo’s sycophants could maintain status quo.
I hope Trump turns Biden into ground horsemeat in the debates. If they shoot Biden up with enough drugs to make it through 3 debates, they’ll kill him before the 3rd one. Biden was sharp on TV after one of the big primary dates; during the interviews shortly thereafter he could not find his rear end with both hands, he talked like the dementia victim he is.
The Logan Act says we can’t have “intercourse” with a foreign agent.
To say one can’t have sex with a dog is one thing. Dogs need to be protected.
So who did Flynn pork? And was he “in like Flynn”?
“We will stop him.”
– Peter Strzok to FBI paramour, Lisa Page
_________________________________
“POTUS [Obama] wants to know everything we’re doing.”
– Lisa Page to FBI paramour, Peter Strzok
Subtle.
Today’s NYTs:
Bill Barr Twisted My Words in Dropping the Flynn Case. Here’s the Truth.
The F.B.I.’s interview of Mr. Flynn was constitutional, lawful and for a legitimate counterintelligence purpose.
By Mary B. McCord
“At the direction of Attorney General Bill Barr, the Justice Department last week moved to dismiss a false-statements charge against Michael Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser. The reason stated was that the continued prosecution “would not serve the interests of justice.”
The motion was signed by Timothy Shea, a longtime trusted adviser of Mr. Barr and, since January, the acting U.S. attorney in Washington. In attempting to support its argument, the motion cites more than 25 times the F.B.I.’s report of an interview with me in July 2017, two months after I left a decades-long career at the department (under administrations of both parties) that culminated in my role as the acting assistant attorney general for national security.
That report, commonly referred to as a “302,” is an interesting read. It vividly describes disagreements between leadership of the Justice Department and the F.B.I. about how to handle the information we had learned about Mr. Flynn’s calls with the Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and, more specifically, Mr. Flynn’s apparent lies about those calls to incoming Vice President Mike Pence.
But the report of my interview is no support for Mr. Barr’s dismissal of the Flynn case. It does not suggest that the F.B.I. had no counterintelligence reason for investigating Mr. Flynn. It does not suggest that the F.B.I.’s interview of Mr. Flynn — which led to the false-statements charge — was unlawful or unjustified. It does not support that Mr. Flynn’s false statements were not material. And it does not support the Justice Department’s assertion that the continued prosecution of the case against Mr. Flynn, who pleaded guilty to knowingly making material false statements to the FBI, “would not serve the interests of justice.”
I can explain why, relying entirely on documents the government has filed in court or released publicly.
Notably, Mr. Barr’s motion to dismiss does not argue that the F.B.I. violated the Constitution or statutory law when agents interviewed Mr. Flynn about his calls with Mr. Kislyak. It doesn’t claim that they violated his Fifth Amendment rights by coercively questioning him when he wasn’t free to leave. Nor does the motion claim that the interview was the fruit of a search or seizure that violated the Fourth Amendment. Any of these might have justified moving to dismiss the case. But by the government’s own account, the interview with Mr. Flynn was voluntary, arranged in advance and took place in Mr. Flynn’s own office.
Without constitutional or statutory violations grounding its motion, the Barr-Shea motion makes a contorted argument that Mr. Flynn’s false statements and omissions to the F.B.I. were not “material” to any matter under investigation. Materiality is an essential element that the government must establish to prove a false-statements offense. If the falsehoods aren’t material, there’s no crime.
The department concocts its materiality theory by arguing that the F.B.I. should not have been investigating Mr. Flynn at the time they interviewed him. The Justice Department notes that the F.B.I. had opened a counterintelligence investigation of Mr. Flynn in 2016 as part of a larger investigation into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russian efforts to interfere with the presidential election. And the department notes that the F.B.I. had intended to close the investigation of Mr. Flynn in early January 2017 until it learned of the conversations between Mr. Flynn and Mr. Kislyak around the same time.
Discounting the broader investigation and the possibility of Russian direction or control over Mr. Flynn, the department’s motion myopically homes in on the calls alone, and because it views those calls as “entirely appropriate,” it concludes the investigation should not have been extended and the interview should not have taken place.
The account of my interview in 2017 doesn’t help the department support this conclusion, and it is disingenuous for the department to twist my words to suggest that it does. What the account of my interview describes is a difference of opinion about what to do with the information that Mr. Flynn apparently had lied to the incoming vice president, Mr. Pence, and others in the incoming administration about whether he had discussed the Obama administration’s sanctions against Russia in his calls with Mr. Kislyak. Those apparent lies prompted Mr. Pence and others to convey inaccurate statements about the nature of the conversations in public news conferences and interviews.
Why was that so important? Because the Russians would have known what Mr. Flynn and Mr. Kislyak discussed. They would have known that, despite Mr. Pence’s and others’ denials, Mr. Flynn had in fact asked Russia not to escalate its response to the sanctions. Mr. Pence’s denial of this on national television, and his attribution of the denial to Mr. Flynn, put Mr. Flynn in a potentially compromised situation that the Russians could use against him.
The potential for blackmail of Mr. Flynn by the Russians is what the former Justice Department leadership, including me, thought needed to be conveyed to the incoming White House. After all, Mr. Flynn was set to become the national security adviser, and it was untenable that Russia — which the intelligence community had just assessed had sought to interfere in the U.S. presidential election — might have leverage over him.
This is where the F.B.I. disagreed with the Justice Department’s preferred approach. The F.B.I. wasn’t ready to reveal this information to the incoming administration right away, preferring to keep investigating, not only as part of its counterintelligence investigation but also possibly as a criminal investigation. Although several of us at Justice thought the likelihood of a criminal prosecution under the Logan Act was quite low (the act prohibits unauthorized communications with foreign governments to influence their conduct in relation to disputes with the United States), we certainly agreed that there was a counterintelligence threat.
That’s exactly why we wanted to alert the incoming administration. Ultimately, after our dispute over such notification continued through the inauguration and into the start of the Trump administration, the F.B.I. — without consulting the Justice Department — arranged to interview Mr. Flynn. By the time Justice Department leadership found out, agents were en route to the interview in Mr. Flynn’s office.
The account of my July 2017 interview describes my department’s frustration with the F.B.I.’s conduct, sometimes using colorful adjectives like “flabbergasted” to describe our reactions. We weren’t necessarily opposed to an interview — our focus had been on notification — but any such interview should have been coordinated with the Justice Department. There were protocols for engaging with White House officials and protocols for interviews, and this was, of course, a sensitive situation. We objected to the rogueness of the decision by the F.B.I. director, Jim Comey, made without notice or opportunity to weigh in.
The Barr-Shea motion to dismiss refers to my descriptions of the F.B.I.’s justification for not wanting to notify the new administration about the potential Flynn compromise as “vacillating from the potential compromise of a ‘counterintelligence’ investigation to the protection of a purported ‘criminal’ investigation.” But that “vacillation” has no bearing on whether the F.B.I. was justified in engaging in a voluntary interview with Mr. Flynn. It has no bearing on whether Mr. Flynn’s lies to the F.B.I. were material to its investigation into any links or coordination between Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election.
And perhaps more significant, it has no bearing on whether Mr. Flynn’s lies to the F.B.I. were material to the clear counterintelligence threat posed by the susceptible position Mr. Flynn put himself in when he told Mr. Pence and others in the new administration that he had not discussed the sanctions with Mr. Kislyak. The materiality is obvious.
In short, the report of my interview does not anywhere suggest that the F.B.I.’s interview of Mr. Flynn was unconstitutional, unlawful or not “tethered” to any legitimate counterintelligence purpose.
Mary B. McCord, the former acting assistant attorney general for national security at the Department of Justice, is legal director for Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection and a visiting law professor.”
Well Mary, the problem is that the FBI had no business in that room with Flynn, inquiring about foreign policy change in the first place. Americans are actually not as illiterate as you all think.. and we know that it’s not a crime for the incoming President to change Foreign Policy from the previous administrative policies, and therefore, the FBI had no legitimate purpose to go and talk to Flynn that day at all.
Paying off a foreign government for helping you get elected is not a foreign policy change. Were you born yesterday?
Obama did plenty of that but wasn’t investigated because it didn’t fall under a pay off. Of Course VP Biden should be investigated for payoffs from Ukraine and China. Secretary of State Clinton should be investigated for the money her foundation received from foreign sources given in close proximity to favors she granted.
Flynn did none of those things. His statement to the Russians was Obama policy. But Anon knows all of this and is lying because that is his nature.
In today’s news we learn that Russia wanted Hillary to win. And there is no concrete evidence that Russia hacked the DNC emails.
“The F.B.I.’s interview of Mr. Flynn was constitutional, lawful ”
I don’t see where all those words put together in a legal brief would make the Flynn case lawful. We can start right at the beginning. FISA abuse. That was not lawful. Nor was the process lawful. It can only be made lawful by getting rid of facts.
Let us see the quotes and explanation that make this case lawful. They do not exist and Anon will not produce them because as usual he can’t.
Again, it’s Gainesville. Ordinary people understand black letters and physical realities. For partisan Democrats, reality is defined as emotional acceptability. Natacha’s even worse in this respect.
What a crock.
Fact: the FBI discovered Senator Sweinstein was paying a Chinese spy on her staff FOR MANY YEARS. Just imagine how much dirt on Dianne that spy accumulated over those many years, and sent same dirt to China to potentially blackmail Dianne.
DID THE FBI OPEN AN INVESTIGATION TO SEE IF MAYBE DIANNE WAS AN EFFING CHINESE SPY HERSELF, OR IF MAYBE THE CHINESE MIGHT BLACKMAIL HER BY THREATENING TO DISCLOSE HER PAYING A CHINESE SPY ON HER STAFF FOR YEARS? Did the FBI tap the spy’s phones and record conversations with Dianne and her staff like the FBI did to the incoming and present POTUS?
NONONONONONONONO!!! Instead, they called dumb arse Dianne, told her what’s up, and the whole thing just goes woosh into thin air.
But with Trump, they invented this whole Russian threat lie to remove him from office.
This McCord lady is full of crap.
Every single contradiction she lists is purely her judgement/opinion and nothing else.
Deep State Skunk Mary McCord Worked to Set Up Flynn then Joined Schiff’s Team in Trump Impeachment Hoax — Now She’s Whining That She’s Innocent Flower.
Former Obama DOJ-NSD Head Mary McCord was involved in setting up General Flynn in the White House days after the 2017 Inauguration. Then she went to work for Adam Schiff and helped form the bogus impeachment stunt against President Trump earlier this year. McCord is as crooked as they get.
Julie Kelly at American Greatness published
A report issued last month by Atkinson’s counterpart at the Justice Department, Michael Horowitz, offered a detailed account of how that agency, specifically the FBI, violated the law to obtain a warrant to spy on Carter Page for a year. Horowitz identified 17 “significant errors” on the initial application and three subsequent renewals submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
The office responsible for the government’s FISA process is the Justice Department’s National Security Division. The head of the NSD during the first several months of the secret surveillance on Carter Page was acting Assistant Attorney General Mary McCord.
McCord’s senior counsel? Michael Atkinson.
From July 2016—the same month the FBI opened its investigation into the Trump campaign—until he was appointed the intelligence community’s watchdog in early 2018, Atkinson served as a high-ranking official in the same Justice Department attempting to take down Donald Trump.
McCord, an Obama appointee and Atkinson’s boss for seven months, not only managed three of the four FISAs on Carter Page, she ran the department’s investigation into Trump-Russia collusion until she resigned in the spring of 2017.
McCord is mentioned more than two dozen times in Horowitz’s report. She became the division’s acting chief right before the department approved the first FISA application on Page.
Atkinson was her lawyer.
According to the Horowitz report, McCord “was involved in certain aspects of the [Trump campaign] investigation . . . with the first Carter Page FISA application in September and October 2016.” McCord also attended numerous briefings related to Crossfire Hurricane, the official name of the FBI’s counterintelligence probe into four Trump campaign associates.
McCord, who was interviewed by Horowitz, told the inspector general she informed Andrew McCabe, the former FBI deputy director, that the first FISA application “needed to include more information about who hired [Christopher] Steele.” She recalled “asking about Steele’s fee arrangement with Fusion GPS” just days before the first application was filed on October 21, 2016. (An interesting detail since McCord unconvincingly claimed in a podcast interview last month that she didn’t see Steele’s dossier until it was published in BuzzFeed in January 2017, a common trope recited by Obama loyalists.)
So many words, so little space and time to lie………………
Disagreeing with some on this page, but it seems clear to me that the entire Flynn investigation was a solution to a different (wrong or non existent) problem and, therefore, it lacked proper predicate. The reason for investigating Flynn (and Papadopoulos and Carter Page and … ) was to find a way to Trump, to justify a special counsel investigation … with objective being to damage (“bring down”) the Trump presidency. Flynn lied after he was advised he didn’t need counsel, and after threats they will go after his family. Sounds to me a lot more like the Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo) and Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (KGB).. But I would agree that the Logan Act must go and the Supreme Court cannot initiate this process itself, it has to begin in Congress or lower courts.
The Logan act is one of those laws that sounds good in theory but when it’s sifted by the First Amendment, it obviously can’t work
Which is why it has racked up so few prosecutions and convictions in its long existence
Obama, the Constitutional Law scholar.
See also Mickey Mouse a Nobel Prize-winning physicist.
Obama hid his illiteracy in law behind a mask of urbanity.
https://reason.com/2019/05/14/the-logan-act-is-awful-and-no-its-not-going-to-be-used-against-john-kerry/
This column by JT contains so many falsehoods he’s repeated before as to make it’s rebuttal tedious. One would expect a law professor to be more precise and, you know, legal in his comments.
One of the newer claims is that he is a member of the free speech community, an impossibility if one supports Trump, as his absence of criticism clearly indicates. Free speech advocates don’t favor politicians suing members of our free press, nor do they constantly attack and deride it, nor do they favor blanket refusal to provide administration members for testifying before Congress.
Otherwise, same old same old. The Logan act was revised by law as recently as 1994 and a crime bill supported by the GOP and which did not pass in 2007 – check the date – also included revisions. The Logan Act was not part of it’s reason for failure. It is on the books and not unconstitutional until the SC says so.
The Mueller report did not clear the Trump campaign of collusion, a non-legal term it never addressed except to say it wasn’t addressing it. It did report that it did not have evidence of a criminal conspiracy though in sworn testimony Mueller later said they did find it was innocent of that crime and they had been stonewalled by the campaign and Trump. The report provided many instances of collusion, most of them already known through the excellent reporting of the NYTs, the WSJ, and the WaPo. It is surprising to learn that JT is ignorant of these instances.
Flynn was sleazebag traitor who until Nov 2016 had been an unregistered agent of Turkey and in Dec 2016 after speaking to higher ups in the Trump campaign spoke to the Russian Ambassador the day after Obama announced sanctions for their interference in our 2016 election. Flynn told him that for services rendered, he shouldn’t worry about these sanctions. In return, Putin the next day stated he would not reciprocate to Obama’s sanctions and Trump thanked him. This is not a disagreement about policy on nuclear weapons control or the Suez Canal, this is a corrupt pay off to a foreign government for it’s help cheating in our elections, and possibly for earlier personal financial aid to Trump. His toadie behavior since leaves that possibility open.
In short JT swings and misses again and one wonders what motivates him. It isn’t fee speech.
Correction:
“…later said they did NOT find it was innocent of that crime…”
like you care about accuracy
Bwahahahahaahaha
You are no authority on what is free speech, except for your own opinion
Prof JT has taught the principles of free speech in university, advocated them in testimony before Congress, and represented clients in open court.
What have you done that makes you fit to judge him and spew this increasingly bitter pile forth? Let’s establish your bona fides if you present yourself as the judge of “free speech.” r
One does not need to be an expert to understand the principles this country was founded on and nothing about Flynn’s willful and secret undermining of our elections – which he then lied about – should be confused with “free speech”, as is JT’s inexplicable intent. That’s treason, not free speech.
Flynn did nothing to “undermine our elections” other than vote for somebody you don’t like and volunteer to serve his country, which again, you don’t like.
Kurtz, Obama’s sanctions on Russia were for trying to interfere in our elections and Flynn told them not to worry, in private, and then lied about it. That’s pay off, not free speech. He wasn’t serving the US, he was serving the Russians and Trump’s self interest. The US interest is in straight elections without foreign governments trying to rig it.
“Obama’s sanctions on Russia were for trying to interfere in our elections and Flynn told them not to worry, in private, and then lied about it. ”
That is a lie and contradicted in the written records of the FBI.
Kurtz, it seems you are finally understanding what Anon is made of.
These criminal types count on “thinkers” like you to carry their water, so carry on. The FBI had no business in that room with Flynn because, and I know this is a shocker, there is no crime in Trump changing his foreign policy from Obama’s, which is what the FBI were there to investigate.
That wasn’t foreign policy, it was pay off for services rendered..
Like Professor Dershowitz, Professor Turley is an established Civil Libertarian as well as an impartial arbiter of law. Partisans usually don’t even believe that those people exist, so sure they are that everybody is shallow as themselves. And that’s too bad, because it used to be understood that every American was supposed to embrace those principles.
Hi, bythebook,
Which planet were you born on. Definately one not in this universe
You are such an obvious clown:
Clown: “This column by JT contains so many falsehoods he’s repeated before as to make it’s rebuttal tedious. One would expect a law professor to be more precise and, you know, legal in his comments….One of the newer claims is that he is a member of the free speech community an impossibility if one supports Trump…”
Really, that’s the first “falsehood” you cite and your “reasoning” has no reason. You’ve got Trump Derangement Syndrome for sure. Sadly, there is no cure.
Based on your comments in this area, you may enjoy these sources as well……
https://www.amazon.com/We-Never-Went-Moon-Americas/dp/1545393575
https://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/1219100/end-of-the-world-prophecy-pope-francis-2020-malachy-vatican-church-spt
amazon.com/Defend-Yourself-Against-Alien-Abduction/dp/0609802631
“This column by JT contains so many falsehoods he’s repeated before as to make it’s rebuttal tedious”
Pure garbage hidden among a lot of words some spun to be opinion.
Pick the three most important factual statements made by Turley that are wrong. Copy in quotes and tell us what is wrong.
You will make all sorts of excuses but you won’t do that because you can’t. Yet you can write a lot of garbage as you just did above. This demonstrates how disingenous you are.
To TDS victims like the above dope, to criticize anything associated with a Demoncrap by definition makes said person one who “supports Trump.”
Non sequitur, much?
Excellent post by Turley summarizing history and bringing it into the present. Those that feel Turley has recently changed his mind will have a problem for he has a long history of fighting against the Logan Act.
I wish Professor Turley would stop referencing the “Mueller” investigation. Andrew Weismann and his 13 other toadies ran the hoax. Like Biden to the DNC, Mueller was a figurehead trying to lend credibility to this whole miscarriage of justice.
Mueller as a figurehead is no compliment to those who followed him
Believe all womyn indeed
I think the Flynn indictment was so brazen in its vacuousness, some figured there just had to be something that was going to come out at a later date.
Always read an indictment at face value. People who did that could smell something fishy about it. And the smell wasn’t Russian collusion.
If the Logan Act is good enough for Flynn, it is good enough for Kerry and Obama.
The rationale for the Logan Act is sound — to prevent private American interests from interfering in US diplomacy. There could be instances where a post-election “hostile transition of power” leads to overreach on the part of the incoming administration. However, the 2016 transition was not such an instance.
If anything, elements within the outgoing administration (Obama) were acting outside the law to attack the President-elect, based on a fabricated partisan narrative of him being a Manchurian candidate.
WHY ISN’T THERE A LAW that prevents any FORMER GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS from the executive and l;egislative branches from meeting and / or otherwise discussing anything resembling “foreign policy” matters with ANY OFFICIALS from other nations. Whether they are representing themselves, offering lobbying influence, whatever, any possible such actions risk interfering with the “officials” dealing of the United States government (in office) and at the very least are inappropriate and could be prosecuted (?) under Title 18 ( 18 U.S.C. § 2384)..Kerry clearly was not officially representing the sitting government when he met with senior Iranian officials after the Iran nuclear agreement was canceled. Why wasn’t the Obama former VP Kerry required to testify before the Intel committee and produce under oath a written record and oral testimony under oath of everything that was discussed.
Danley, because, under the First amendment, Americans are free to have opinions about foreign policy, to say them out loud, and to associate with foreigners. If you can do all three freely, then the Logan act is pretty clearly unconstitutional.
Turley is on fire. It’s clear from his recent posts that he understands the depths to which Obama, the Dems, and their hit men in the media have taken our country. This blog is a must read, everyday.
Turley might be rethinking his allegiance to the Democrat Party but I doubt will be changing his voting patterns at this time.
Notice how the leftist fadical regressives run to use it when it suits them but deny it in cases like Kerry The Coward.
What a fetid swamp.