“I will be announcing my decision on the Iran Deal tomorrow from the White House at 2:00pm,” President Trump tweeted on Monday afternoon. The maneuvers on both sides of the aisle were coming fast and furious over the weekend.
French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel both (apparently, as of now) failed to divert Trump from his collision course with ending the agreement that has put a temporary halt to the Iranian nuclear weapons program. Monday morning, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson ratcheted-up the foreign pressure a notch, not by visiting with Trump, but appearing in the one place he was virtually guaranteed the president would hear him: For News Channel’s “Fox and Friends” program.
Johnson agreed that there are aspects of the deal that need to be reworked, such as the fact that Iran’s intercontinental ballistic missile program still continues, and the deal’s expiration date. Last week’s revelations from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made it clear that Iran has retained the results of its earlier nuclear experiments and could resume its program at any time.
But two issues, one on each side of the issue, stand out for their desperation.
The Observer runs a hit piece
The Observer is the Sunday companion to Britain’s left-wing daily newspaper The Guardian. This week, the paper alleged that the Trump administration hired an Israeli firm to dig up dirt on two of the deal’s architects: Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, who helped sell the deal to the American public, and Colin Kahl, Vice President Joe Biden’s national security adviser. Both men have remained in the area, sharply criticizing the president at every turn.
But the Observer article was so devoid of details that it is a wonder that anyone took it seriously. It began with a blunt, direct accusation: “Aides to Donald Trump, the US president, hired an Israeli private intelligence agency to orchestrate a ‘dirty ops’ campaign against key individuals from the Obama administration who helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal.”
The authors claimed to have seen “incendiary documents,” but did not provide a link to copies, or even quote directly from them. They also did not name the firm involved. But MSNBC host Ronan Farrow, writing in The New Yorker, claimed the firm was Black Cube, a company that disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein had hired to help him deal with allegations of sexual harassment and assault.
Black Cube admitted working for Weinstein, but said it quit when it became clear what they were being asked to do. In the Trump case, it issued a flat denial. “Black Cube has no relation whatsoever to the Trump administration, to Trump aides, to anyone close to the administration, or to the Iran Nuclear deal.” Farrow had more details thanThe Observer, although he reached a different conclusion.
Farrow, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his work exposing Weinstein’s actions, disclosed how Black Cube used the same front company as an avenue to approach its subjects. In that respect, it does appear likely that Black Cube was looking for negative information on Rhodes and Kahl. But Farrow’s sources appear to be better than The Observer’s. He concluded that the firm wasn’t hired by the administration, but by “a private-sector client pursuing commercial interests related to sanctions on Iran.”
In its rush to condemn Trump, The Observer allowed its preferred narrative to override the facts. I’d call the whole affair “fake news” except for the fact that the circumstantial evidence does point to Black Cube’s involvement… it’s just that the administration wasn’t the one looking for the dirt. And with Kahl’s recent foray into nutty conspiracy theory, it probably wasn’t necessary in the first place.
Logan Act Madness
But the left weren’t the only ones trying to cast aspersions on their opponents. Speaking with George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who recently joined the president’s personal legal team to deal with the special prosecutor’s investigation into alleged campaign collusion with Russia, called out former secretary of State John Kerry.
The Boston Globe reported Friday that twice in the last two months, Kerry has met with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif “to discuss ways of preserving” the Iran deal. Giuliani used these meetings to attempt to divert attention from Robert Mueller’s probe.
“John Kerry is now violating the Logan Act and nobody seems to care,” he told Stephanopoulos.
I last wrote about the Logan Act in December. It is a 1799 law passed in reaction to the actions of George Logan, a Philadelphia Quaker physician who in 1798 attempted private negotiations with French Foreign Minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, to try and avert a war between France and the United States under President John Adams. The Federalist Congress made it a crime when a private citizen “directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or 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.”
I said it then and I’ll say it now: regardless of who is leveling the charge, the Logan Act would never withstand judicial scrutiny. This is why only two people have been indicted under the act, and neither case went to trial. As I wrote in December, the federal government simply has no right to tell an American citizen who they may or may not correspond with, and what they may or may not say in that correspondence.
It’s time for one of two things to happen: either Congress should repeal this silly, unconstitutional law, or the Justice Department should prosecute someone, so the courts have an opportunity to throw the law into the dustbin of history where it belongs. I feel strongly enough that I’d contribute to the legal defense fund of anyone formally accused of violating the Logan Act.
The Iran deal is a deeply flawed arrangement and needs changes in order to prevent, rather than just delay, the Iranian regime from obtaining a nuclear weapon. But in their haste to promote their respective agendas, neither side is exactly covering itself in glory.
