Fred Karger To Feds: Investigate Brian Brown For Collaborating With Russia

Fred Karger, the eternal thorn in NOM's backside, has written to Secretary of State John Kerry and Attorney General Eric Holder with a request that they investigate Brian Brown for collaborating with the Russian government. Such an action, Karger argues, could violate the Logan Act, which makes it a crime for independent citizens to confer with foreign governments against the interests of the United States.  An excerpt from Karger's letter:

Immediately after Mr. Brown’s meetings and testimony in the Russian capital, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a severe crackdown on LGBT rights, affecting all LGBT visitors to Russia to include Americans. If Mr. Brown did travel to Moscow with French religious leaders with the express intention of furthering discrimination against LGBT Russians and all LGBT travelers to Russia, this could be in direct conflict with current United States laws. It has been widely reported that Mr. Putin’s crackdown against LGBT rights in Russia was in part responsible for President Obama’s cancelation of his much-anticipated visit to Moscow in August for talks with Russian President Putin. [snip] I hope that both of you gentleman will use the authority of your offices to immediately investigate this possible very serious violation of the Logan Act by Mr. Brown and any other American citizens who may have accompanied him to Russia. Americans who correspond, testify or meet with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government certainly would appear to be in violation of this Act.

RELATED: While threats of Logan Act prosecutions have occasionally been lobbed, mostly at activists who meet with unfriendly foreign governments, only one indictment has ever been made. That was a 1803 case brought against a Kentucky farmer who wrote a news article advocating that the territory west of the then-US border should become an independent nation to be allied with France. The farmer was never tried, perhaps because that year's Louisiana Purchase made his cause moot.