He is. And it's ILLEGAL.
Assistant Secretary of State @manishasingh and @AriFleischer: It would be “very inappropriate” if @JohnKerry is conducting shadow diplomacy with Iran hotair.com/archives/2018/…
Assistant Secretary of State @manishasingh and @AriFleischer: It would be “very inappropriate” if @JohnKerry is conducting shadow diplomacy with Iran hotair.com/archives/2018/…
"This is his [Kerry's] entire career. He spent four of the past 50 years or so conducting official diplomacy on behalf of the United States and chunks of the rest of it conducting diplomacy on behalf of himself and his political allies."
"Negotiating with enemies with zero White House authority isn’t an aberration for him. It’s just sort of what John Kerry does. Imagine him waking up today, nearly 50 years into it, and finding out it’s 'very inappropriate.'"
“John Kerry is out giving advice to Iran about how to maneuver around what Donald Trump is doing; it’s insidious,” @AriFleischer, former WH press secretary for George W. Bush, said Wednesday “I don’t know if it’s legal or illegal, I don’t care about that side of it. It’s wrong."
“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” is guilty of a federal offense."
"Is that not the dictionary definition of what Kerry’s been up to? He didn’t meet with his buddy Javad Zarif to chitchat randomly about world affairs. He met with him to talk about the #IranDeal, an agreement to which the United States was a party before Trump pulled the plug"
.Obviously he’s counseling Zarif that the deal will be reinstated if a Democrat defeats Trump in 2020, which creates an incentive for Iran not to make any concessions to Trump in the meantime.
Why bow to U.S. pressure, after all, if you have reason to believe that pressure will be lifted? He’s undermining the president’s leverage against an enemy with respect to a “dispute” involving the highest stakes.
And he’s not really hiding it. Not only did he admit yesterday that he’d met with Zarif three or four times since leaving office, the media has reported on their meetings previously.
In other words, Kerry was trying to secretly amass foreign influence in order to make it more politically painful for the president to follow his preferred course of action on foreign policy.
The prime beneficiary would be Iran, in the name of protecting his and Obama’s legacy. “Very inappropriate” said current Assistant Secretary of State Manisha Singh at a congressional hearing today, as you’ll see below. Sounds like a pretty good Logan Act test case to me.
