Trump didn’t violate Logan Act with reshare of old Iran social media post, experts say

After Iran launched a barrage of missiles at Israel on April 13 in its first direct military assault on the country, Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., told his X followers why he thought former President Donald Trump should be reelected.

"This is the strength we need back in the White House!" Scott wrote April 13, sharing a July 22, 2018, tweet in which Trump threatened Iran’s president. Trump later that day shared a screenshot of Scott’s post on Truth Social , without further comment.

Trump's sharing of Scott’s post led several X users to accuse the former president of violating the Logan Act, a 1799 law that bars private citizens from communicating with foreign governments to influence them about disputes with the U.S.

"While Biden is busy asserting our influence on Israel to prevent escalation, Trump, the orange buffoon who didn’t know Putin invaded Ukraine, was busy violating the Logan Act to threaten Iran and cheered on by @GOP," wrote one X user with 98,000 followers.

We found other X posts making similar accusations about Trump and the Logan Act.

Experts told Politifact that Trump’s resharing of an old social media post from when he was president doesn’t rise to a violation of the Logan Act.

In the 2018 tweet that Scott reshared, Trump wrote in all-caps to then-Iranian President Hassan Rouhani: "NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!" Rouhani is no longer Iran’s president; he left office in 2021.

Trump’s post was in response to Rouhani’s July 2018 remarks warning the U.S. that war with Iran would be the "mother of all wars."

The Logan Act says that a U.S. citizen "without authority of the United States" can be fined or imprisoned for up to three years for "directly or indirectly" corresponding with a foreign government to influence "any disputes or controversies with the United States."

The Congressional Research Service said in a 2015 report that no one ever has been prosecuted under the Logan Act, although two people have been indicted, the last in 1853. The law has bubbled up in political chatter in recent years.

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Trump has accused others of violating the act. In 2019, he twice accused John Kerry, a former secretary of state but then a private citizen, of violating the Logan Act by meeting with Iranian officials. He made a similar allegation against Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., in 2020.

In 2017, bloggers accused Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who is now deceased, of violating the act when he called an Australian ambassador to smooth over a contentious phone call between Trump and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. We rated that claim False. 

Similar accusations were made against Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., when she visited Syria in 2007 during President George W. Bush’s administration, and when 47 senators wrote a letter to Iran’s leaders in 2015 during President Barack Obama’s administration.

Frank Bowman, a former federal prosecutor and a University of Missouri emeritus law professor, argued in a 2017 Slate essay that retired U.S. Army Gen. Michael Flynn should not be charged for violating the Logan Act, as other legal scholars had proposed, for meeting with Russian officials while serving on Trump’s transition team. 

Regarding Trump’s recent action, "Tweeting doesn't seem to me to constitute ‘correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government,’" as the Logan Act specifies, Bowman said. "Regardless of the technicalities, no competent prosecutor would touch this with a barge pole."

Eugene Volokh, a UCLA law professor, said if the Logan Act were meant to apply to "public exhortations to foreign governments, it would pretty clearly violate modern First Amendment principles."

Americans, including former officeholders, Volokh said, "have a right to publicly call for various governments to do or not do various things," whether it’s calling on Israel to follow U.S. advice on Gaza or for Russia to free imprisoned Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.

"More broadly, of course a campaigning public official has to be able to express his views about foreign policy, and statements to voters framed as demands to foreign officials are a pretty normal and constitutionally protected means of doing so," Volokh said.

Volokh said if there were to be a Logan Act prosecution, a court would likely read the statute narrowly to focus on direct one-on-one negotiations. Interpreting it to include public statements, which in Trump’s case could be aimed just as much at a U.S. audience as at a foreign government, wouldn’t be "consistent with First Amendment law," Volokh said.

We rate the claim that Trump violated the Logan Act by resharing an old Tweet directed at Iran’s then-leader False.