The Logan Act has once again entered the headlines over former President Donald Trump’s reported post-presidential conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Critics have slammed Trump for the alleged conversations, saying they would violate a long-standing law, the Logan Act.
The Logan Act was an early piece of legislation enacted in 1799, named after Pennsylvania Sen. George Logan. Logan, a pacifist, sparked outrage at home when he traveled to France on his own accord to try and negotiate an end to the Quasi-War with France. Adding to the scandal, he was a Democratic-Republican, opposed to the ruling Federalist Party. President George Washington himself voiced his disapproval of Logan’s conduct, according to the Congressional Research Service. In response, Congress passed a law banning negotiations between private citizens and foreign governments that would undermine the United States’s position.
“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, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both,” the Logan Act states.
It clarifies that it does not “abridge the right of a citizen to apply, himself or his agent, to any foreign government or the agents thereof for redress of any injury which he may have sustained from such government or any of its agents or subjects.”
Logan himself unsuccessfully campaigned to get the Logan Act repealed. Despite it being in place, Logan embarked on a similar mission in 1810 to try and prevent the outbreak of the War of 1812 but wasn’t indicted under the act.
Though a felony, punishable by up to three years in prison, the Logan Act appears to have been largely symbolic, seldom being used. In the 225 years since it was passed, only two people have ever been indicted under the act, one in 1802 and one in 1851, and none have been convicted.
Any prosecutions under the Logan Act today would be sure to invite a battle in the Supreme Court having seemingly been rendered largely obsolete by federal courts. Georgetown University Law Center professor Stephen Vladeck argued that “a Logan Act prosecution would fall apart because of subsequent federal free speech cases that have taken a dim view of attempts to criminalize speech.”
Former presidents and politicians, Republicans and Democrats, frequently meet with foreign leaders on their own accord. To date, none have been charged with violating the Logan Act.
Democrats and Republicans have periodically floated prosecutions under the Logan Act in recent years, usually toward political opponents. Former Secretary of State John Kerry and Trump are two favorite targets for prosecution under the Act.
The Logan Act is back in the news after Bob Woodward revealed in his new book War, citing an anonymous Trump staffer, that Trump and Putin have talked over the phone several times since the former president left office. The details of the conversations weren’t made clear.
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The Kremlin and Trump’s team both denied that phone calls between the two had taken place.
“None of these made-up stories by Bob Woodward are true and are the work of a truly demented and deranged man who suffers from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said of the book in a statement. “Woodward is an angry, little man and is clearly upset because President Trump is successfully suing him because of the unauthorized publishing of recordings he made previously.”