Perspective: What President Trump doesn’t understand about the Logan Act
President Trump speaks on energy infrastructure at the Cameron LNG Export Terminal in Hackberry, La., on May 14, 2019. By Jordan E. Taylor Jordan E. Taylor is a historian of print and politics in revolutionary America. May 15 at 6:00 AM Last week, President Trump confirmed the fears of many late 18th-century Americans when he suggested that former secretary of state John F. Kerry had violated the Logan Act, a 1799 law that prohibits ordinary citizens from negotiating with foreign powers.
Notably, though, Trump’s assertion that Kerry “should be prosecuted” under the terms of the Logan Act repudiates its very goal: removing partisan influence from diplomacy. In fact, this threat of prosecution legitimizes the very fear of the law that its detractors voiced: that in its attempt to curb partisanship, it actually invites opportunities to inflame partisan tensions.
Franco-American diplomacy had become a particularly contentious issue. Led by Thomas Jefferson, the Democratic-Republican Party was sympathetic to France — so much so that opponents often referred to its members as “Jacobins.” The Federalist Party, led by President John Adams, was much more suspicious about France and closely aligned with Britain. The result was a rancorous partisan debate in 1795 when the Federalist government negotiated a friendly treaty with Britain, known as the Jay Treaty.
With Logan’s example fresh in Federalists’ minds, a bitter debate ensued in Congress. Federalist James Bayard worried that if a person like Logan negotiated a treaty on his own behalf, one party might say it should be accepted and the other that it should not, which “might involve the country in a civil war.”
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