Intel: Why Trump is calling a Democrat’s Iran meeting illegal
President Donald Trump doubled down on his accusation today that Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., violated the law by meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at the annual Munich Security Conference over the weekend.
President Donald Trump doubled down on his accusation today that Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., violated the law by meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at the annual Munich Security Conference over the weekend.
Trump tweeted that Murphy’s meeting — as well as a 2018 meeting between Zarif and former Secretary of State John Kerry — violated an obscure 18th century law called the Logan Act. The rarely enforced 1799 law bars unauthorized American citizens from negotiating with foreign powers locked in disputes with the United States.
“Kerry & Murphy illegally violated the Logan Act,” Trump tweeted. “This is why Iran is not making a deal. Must be dealt with strongly!”
Why it matters: Murphy, the top Democrat on the Senate’s Middle East panel and one of the staunchest opponents of Trump’s maximum pressure campaign against Iran, defended the Zarif meeting in a Tuesday blog post on the Medium publishing platform after Trump first accused him of violating the Logan Act. The Federalist, a conservative media outlet, first broke the news of the meeting Monday.
