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A federal judge on Wednesday rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to toss out a lawsuit over missing notes documenting President Donald Trump’s face-to-face meetings with President Vladimir Putin of Russia.
The order by McFadden, a Trump appointee, means that the lawsuit will be allowed to move forward and gives the government until Jan. 10 to say whether Pompeo complied with federal records law or show why he was not obligated to do so. Pompeo will then have until the middle of March to produce the State Department’s record of evidence.
The Washington Post first reported in January that Trump had gone to “extraordinary” lengths to conceal the details of his meetings with Putin, seizing the notes of his interpreter after the leaders’ first meeting in 2017 and ordering the translator not to disclose details of the discussion. Furthermore, The Post reported that no detailed record of Trump’s communications with Putin existed, prompting a flurry of document requests from Congress and outside groups.
Trump and Putin have met in person multiple times, including a handful of occasions where few, if any, other U.S. officials were present. The disclosure of a lack of records came in the midst of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
“The administration has done everything it can to hide what Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump discussed in Hamburg,” Austin Evers, executive director at American Oversight, said in a statement in response to Wednesday’s ruling. “Today’s ruling is an important step to ensuring the government complied with its legal obligations.”
www.politico.com
The order by McFadden, a Trump appointee, means that the lawsuit will be allowed to move forward and gives the government until Jan. 10 to say whether Pompeo complied with federal records law or show why he was not obligated to do so. Pompeo will then have until the middle of March to produce the State Department’s record of evidence.
The Washington Post first reported in January that Trump had gone to “extraordinary” lengths to conceal the details of his meetings with Putin, seizing the notes of his interpreter after the leaders’ first meeting in 2017 and ordering the translator not to disclose details of the discussion. Furthermore, The Post reported that no detailed record of Trump’s communications with Putin existed, prompting a flurry of document requests from Congress and outside groups.
Trump and Putin have met in person multiple times, including a handful of occasions where few, if any, other U.S. officials were present. The disclosure of a lack of records came in the midst of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
“The administration has done everything it can to hide what Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump discussed in Hamburg,” Austin Evers, executive director at American Oversight, said in a statement in response to Wednesday’s ruling. “Today’s ruling is an important step to ensuring the government complied with its legal obligations.”
Judge rejects government’s motion to toss suit over missing Trump-Putin meeting notes
Two watchdog groups charge that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo violated the Federal Records Act.