The Logan Act - law since 1799

President-elect (therefore private citizen) donald trump has again committed an impeachable offense.  Whether the cowardly republican controlled congress will step up and impeach trump for being in direct violation of a log standing law, is of course a different question.

Late last week, trump participated in a phone call with Taiwan's president.  The call was set up by former Senator Bob Dole, working on behalf of the Taiwanese Government per an article in the New York Times.  An excerpt from this article reads

"Former Senator Bob Dole, acting as a foreign agent for the government of Taiwan, worked behind the scenes over the past six months to establish high-level contact between Taiwanese officials and President-elect [d]onald [j]. [t]rump’s staff, an outreach effort that culminated last week in an unorthodox telephone call between Mr. Trump and Taiwan’s president.

Mr. Dole, a lobbyist with the Washington law firm Alston & Bird, coordinated with Mr. Trump’s campaign and the transition team to set up a series of meetings between Mr. Trump’s advisers and officials in Taiwan, according to disclosure documents filed last week with the Justice Department ......"

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/06/us/politics/bob-dole-taiwan-lobby-trump.html


My research shows that the word "unorthodox" is a kind treatment of this action; illegal is the proper characterization of trump's conversation with Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen. Per my research , I found the following in a Wikipedia posting:

The Logan Act (1 Stat. 613, 18 U.S.C. § 953, enacted January 30, 1799) is a United States federal law that forbids unauthorized citizens from negotiating with foreign governments.

§ 953. Private correspondence with foreign governments.

Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan_Act

The only question that I am not able to ascertain an answer for is, is the President-elect an official of the U.S. Government or is she or he a private citizen?  I discussed this with a work colleague, and he noted that the President-elect is not on the Federal payroll yet, therefore it seemed to both of us that the President-elect is not a government official and therefore is a private citizen.  Upon a solid search, on line, the only clarity I could gain was from a source called The Free Dictionary, as follows:

Noun

1.

private citizen - a citizen who does not hold any official or public position

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/private+citizen

So.......based on the legal assumption that the President-elect, and therefore trump, is a private citizen and not an agent of the U.S. Government, all of his conversations with foreign leaders are illegal per The Logan Act, unless he can show written documentation that the State Department or the current President of the United States has authorized trump to speak on behalf of the U.S.  trump cannot claim executive privilege, because he is not the chief executive right now.  trump cannot claim that presenting such documentation would be a breach of security because he is not an employee of the Federal Government and as such  has no claim for conducting foreign policy with out such documentation.

I am not the first person to explore this idea. In Washingtonian, a magazine published locally in D.C., Elaina Plott wrote an article on July 28, 2016 asking the question, "Did Donald Trump Violate the Logan Act?"  She concluded that the answer at that time was no, but he came close.  Today, is a different story.