Politics

FACT CHECK: Ben Shapiro Claims Flynn’s Contact With Russia Was Normal

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Pushing back on criticisms of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s pre-inauguration contacts with Russia, conservative commentator Ben Shapiro claimed Monday on his daily podcast that politicians without foreign policy authority have often contacted foreign governments.

Verdict: True

Politicians and their aides, especially president-elects and their incoming administrations, often have contact with foreign governments. The content and nature of Flynn’s specific conversations with Russia, however, are among the more controversial examples of this type of unofficial foreign contact.

Fact Check:

Flynn recently pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI about conversations he had with Russia’s ambassador in the weeks before President Donald Trump assumed office. The plea sparked new controversy about how Flynn, then a private citizen, may have violated the Logan Act by contacting Russian officials to discuss ongoing U.S. foreign policy.

Enacted in 1799, the Logan Act prohibits Americans “without authority” from corresponding with foreign governments over disputes involving the U.S. Only two people have been indicted for violating the Logan Act, and neither were actually convicted.

Shapiro, however, argued that “the idea that Mike Flynn did anything deeply wrong by contacting the Russian ambassador is absurd.”

Shapiro noted that Flynn was “about to enter office as the national security advisor three weeks” after his contact with the Russian ambassador, claiming that “all this stuff has been happening routinely.”

President-elects Barack Obama and Donald Trump, often with their staffs, each accepted congratulatory phone calls from numerous foreign leaders, and a routine task of incoming administrations is to interact with future partners like foreign dignitaries.

“Elections in America are followed across the world,” Vanderbilt University historian Thomas Schwartz told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “When the results are announced and a winner is declared, every government in the world wants to start communicating with the incoming president.”

But there is also historical precedent for incoming administrations to have contact with foreign governments beyond congratulatory calls.

President-elect Ronald Reagan’s aide – and future national security advisor – for example, secretly negotiated with South Korea to commute the execution of a prominent Korean activist. Brought on by then-President Jimmy Carter’s administration, which had failed to reach an agreement with South Korea, Reagan’s people eventually brokered a commutation deal around Reagan’s 1981 inauguration.

Reporting indicates, however, that Flynn’s actions went beyond an exchange of pleasantries or active coordination with the outgoing administration.

“Flynn certainly did not take diplomacy classes from [Henry] Kissinger,” Schwartz said to TheDCNF.

Flynn was reportedly instructed to contact officials from countries on the U.N. Security Council in an attempt to delay or block a resolution on Israeli settlements, a resolution the Obama administration allowed to pass.

The Washington Post reported that Flynn also seemed to have conveyed to the Russian ambassador during the transition that election meddling-related sanctions on Russia, imposed by the Obama administration, would be “revisited at a later time.”

As a private citizen allegedly attempting to shape foreign affairs and undermine the sitting president, Flynn was a “bull in a china shop compared to past diplomats,” Schwartz remarked.

But Flynn was not the first private citizen or politician to diplomatically undermine a sitting administration.

The Nixon campaign infamously back-channelled with South Vietnam during the 1968 election in an alleged effort to throw off peace talks and prolong the Vietnam War. Then-President Lyndon Johnson privately characterized the possible coordination as “treason.”

(Nixon always denied attempting to scuttle the talks, although FBI wiretapping and recent scholarship strongly suggest guilt.)

During the next election cycle in 1972, Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern’s campaign aide contacted North Vietnamese negotiators about an early release of American POWs. The sitting Nixon administration argued at the time that such overtures could “jeopardize” ongoing peace talks.

Other examples include Carter writing letters to member nations of the U.N. Security Council urging them to vote against then-President George H.W. Bush’s resolution to authorize military action against Iraq for its invasion of Kuwait.

A confidante of Sen. Ted Kennedy allegedly contacted and attempted to coordinate with the Soviet Union in an effort to challenge Reagan’s handling of the Cold War.

The nature of Flynn’s diplomacy falls more in line with these more extreme and controversial examples of foreign contact that often brush against the provisions of the Logan Act.

“All of this happens often because domestic politics don’t actually stop at the water’s edge,” Schwartz explained to TheDCNF. “Politics just continue on.”