So why do we say ignorance of the law is no excuse? And why doesn't, "I wasn't watching my spedometer" work as a pass for speeding?
Anyway...
Okay, it all sounds reasonable. But I have to add that Trump went off on ABC because they said something disparaging about him. That's all it takes for Trump to go off on you. (So why didn't he ever tweet something nasty about Eminem?) But, we really don't know what charges Mueller is pursuing against Trump. We just have to wait.
Although I don't think it was ever proven, and I know it was never legally pursued, the first one to do that - that we know about - was Ronald Reagan when he (allegedly?) made a deal with Iran to hold the American hostages until after the election, to foil Jimmy Carter.
Bingo on that.
Here's the link to Abramson's thread if you want to read it all.
I appreciate attorney Abramson's knowledge and analysis, but note, Trump-fired attorney Preet Bharara - definitely not a Republican, and someone whose knowledge and analysis I also appreciate - has weighed in on the Logan Act only with a link to this New York Times article that he tweets is a good one. The conclusion of the article would make it seem Bharara doesn't think the Logan Act will be used by Mueller.
“There is no reason why the Logan Act would not apply to the president-elect since it applies to all private citizens, and the people working on the transition are all working in a private-citizen capacity. They have not taken the oath, so they are covered by the act — to the extent that matters.”
[...]
A study by the Congressional Research Service in 2015 said nobody has ever been prosecuted under the statute and identified only one instance of an indictment under the law: in 1803, the United States attorney in Kentucky obtained from a grand jury an indictment of a Kentucky farmer who had written an article in support of creating a separate nation in the territory west of the fledgling United States that would be an ally to France. But the prosecutor dropped the case. A recent draft scholarly paper posted online by a Federal Appeals Court law clerk identified a second apparent such indictment, involving the reported arrest in 1852 of a man who wrote a letter to the president of Mexico.
[...]
When White House opponents, usually in Congress, encroach on diplomatic matters, invoking the Logan Act enables the pro-White House party to denounce the other side as not just wrongheaded but lawbreakers.
During the Reagan administration, for example, the Democratic speaker of the House, Jim Wright of Texas, tried to help develop a peace deal in Nicaragua by interacting directly with its president, Daniel Ortega Saavedra, even as the Reagan administration took a harder line and supported overthrowing the Sandinista government. Similarly, during the Obama administration, 47 Republican senators signed a letter to the government of Iran warning the ayatollahs that President Obama’s successor might not follow through on promises Mr. Obama was making as part of negotiations over a deal to end Iran’s nuclear program. During such debates, some White House defenders portrayed the congressional opposition as having violated the Logan Act.
[...]
Given its history, it seems highly unlikely that the Justice Department under Mr. Trump will try to prosecute Mr. Flynn for violating the Logan Act.
NYT
And, by the way, Bharara doesn't think Mueller's single charge against Flynn means he has other charges to use later on, or that it's the only charge he could make against Flynn. He has given his take on a special episode of his podcast. He thinks Mueller didn't want to file charges that might apply to others in the Trump cabal before he has the charges against those people fully fleshed out. And if he wants Flynn to testify against those people, he wouldn't want to have given him a pass on those charges himself. He says "very smart people" he talked to, also think that's the case. He does have to do some unprovable speculation to get there, though.
Again, we will have to wait and see. Hard, isn't it?
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
UPDATE 12/6: This article may substantiate Bharara's analysis of how Mueller is working on the case:
Robert Mueller may not be through with Rick Gates, a deputy Trump campaign aide and one of the four people who have been charged as part of the special counsel probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
In a court appearance Monday in Manhattan, Gates' attorney Walter Mack said that federal prosecutors have told him that more charges, called superseding indictments, may be coming.
[...]
Mack represents both Gates in DC and his business partner in New York. Neither is a witness or co-defendant in the other's case, federal prosecutors say, but attorneys from Mueller's special counsel investigation have raised the possibility that a conflict of interest could arise between the two men and their attorney.
[...]
"We don't know what the government is going to do," Mack said in court, referring to both Gates' case and a white-collar case in New York involving one of Gates' business partners. "I mean, in both cases we've been told that there may be a superseder. We don't know what's happening."
CNN
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