President Donald Trump's top personal attorney Rudy Giuliani on Sunday said that "nobody seems to care" that former Secretary of State John Kerry is 'violating the Logan Act' by quietly trying to save the Iran nuclear deal.
Giuliani appeared on ABC's "This Week" where he was initially discussing Trump and what he knew about the $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, but then pivoted and talked about how nobody seemed to care about Kerry violating the Logan Act, which prohibits American citizens from negotiating with foreign governments, including unauthorized members of Congress
"Certainly before April 5, 2018, the president knew that Michael Cohen had made these payments because he in fact had reimbursed Michael Cohen for it," Host George Stephanopoulos said.
Giuliani said he didn't know and said it wasn't relevant anymore before shifting the conversation to Kerry.
"This is another tangent like chasing the [Michael] Flynn tangent when it turns out that John Kerry is now violating the Logan Act and nobody seems to care. You haven't asked me about it," Giuliani said.
Stephanopoulos ignored Giuliani's comment about Kerry and started asking about Trump again, prompting a laughing Giuliani to say, "We leave John Kerry out of it."
The Boston Globe reported on Friday that Kerry has been quietly trying to salvage the Iran nuclear deal, one of his most significant negotiations as secretary of state.
He sat down at the United Nations with Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to discuss ways of preserving the pact limiting Iran’s nuclear weapons program. It was the second time in about two months that the two had met to strategize over salvaging a deal they spent years negotiating during the Obama administration, according to a person briefed on the meetings.
With the Iran deal facing its gravest threat since it was signed in 2015, Kerry has been on an aggressive yet stealthy mission to preserve it, using his deep lists of contacts gleaned during his time as the top US diplomat to try to apply pressure on the Trump administration from the outside. President Trump, who has consistently criticized the pact and campaigned in 2016 on scuttling it, faces a May 12 deadline to decide whether to continue abiding by its terms.