President Donald Trump has again accused former Secretary of State John Kerry of having unauthorized contacts with Iranian officials, undermining the conduct of U.S. foreign policy.
“He’s talking to Iran and has been, has many meetings and many phone calls and he’s telling them what to do”, Trump said speaking at the White House on May 9. He added, “And that is a total violation of the Logan Act.”
Kerry’s spokesman, Matt Summers, dismissed Trump’s accusation. In a statement he said, “Everything President Trump said today is simply wrong, end of story,” and added, “He's wrong about the facts, wrong about the law, and sadly he's been wrong about how to use diplomacy to keep America safe.”
On September 14, 2018, the current secretary of state Mike Pompeo had made a similar accusation, saying that Kerry had been meeting with Iran’s foreign minister Javad Zarif, characterizing it as “unseemly and unprecedented”, and “beyond inappropriate”.
“This is a former secretary of state engaged with the world's largest state sponsor of terror, and according to him, he was talking to them, he was telling them to wait out this administration”, Pompeo lashed out.
A day earlier, President Donald Trump had accused Kerry of holding "illegal meetings with the very hostile Iranian regime, which can only serve to undercut our great work to the detriment of the American people."
