The Supreme Court is going to be busy

A district court judge in Washington, D.C., has ordered administration lawyers to explain why, for more than two years, the White House has refused to turn over to the State Department an interpreter’s notes from a meeting between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

That meeting took place in the summer of 2017, during a summit of the G-20 nations in Hamburg, Germany. The two men got along so well that the meeting, which was supposed to last an hour, ran to 137 minutes. In the room with Putin were Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, along with two interpreters — one American and the other Russian.

As the lengthy meeting concluded, Trump confiscated notes from the State Department interpreter, thus depriving American diplomats — and, according to an ongoing lawsuit, the American public — of the lone U.S. government record of what exactly was said.

[...]

On Wednesday, Judge Trevor McFadden rejected the administration’s argument that the notes were a presidential record outside the purview of the Federal Records Act, which describes how executive-branch agencies must preserve documents. McFadden is giving the government 90 days to further explain its position but seems disposed to eventually have the White House turn over the translator’s notes to the State Department, in keeping with the dictates of the Federal Records Act.

[...]

Attorneys for the Trump administration argued that “when the president takes into his possession a document, it becomes a presidential record.” Those attorneys at the same time minimized the significance of the interpreter’s notes, describing them as “scribblings” that could not possibly shed light on the conversation between Putin and Trump.

  Yahoo

Jesus.

The argument did not persuade McFadden, a Trump appointee who has been accused of showing favoritism to the president. On Wednesday, he seemed skeptical of the government’s arguments. “I’ve never seen a principal take notes from an interpreter,” McFadden said at one point, calling the whole matter “an odd occurrence.” He also said that documents do not become “presidential records simply because the president took them.”

Well, kudos to McFadden, and I'm surprised.

And although Tillerson was secretary of state at the time of the Putin-Trump meeting, the suit names his successor, Mike Pompeo, as the defendant. The complaint charges Pompeo with “failure to take any action to recover unlawfully alienated State Department meeting notes” and by failing to adhere to the Federal Records Act.

[...]

[Trump's attorneys] will have until early next year to file a new brief, but McFadden gave them little room to maneuver with his skepticism about what constituted a presidential record.

[...]

Even if Trump were to claim them as a presidential record, he would still have to turn them over to a White House archivist, according to Bruce Montgomery, a presidential records expert at the University of Colorado. “He could not claim personal ownership of the notes given that they document the official public business of his administration,” Montgomery said.

[...]

A White House spokesman also declined to comment on where the interpreter’s notes are now.

Trump tore them up and tossed them, I'm quite sure.

Two years. It will be much longer when Trump's attorneys appeal to the Supreme Court for a ruling.

You can bet your bottom dollar Russia has notes on that meeting. And they make great kompromat.

Obst said that a translator’s notes would be confiscated only by someone who was “ignorant of the whole process.” A translator’s notes, he explained, “are not written in words, mostly,” since translators use symbols and, further, have “highly trained memories” that obviate having to write out full words or sentences.

Trump couldn't read them. Let's get that translator in front of a House Committee.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.