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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIt is time to subpoena the Helsinki interpreter
(from January 2019)https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/subpoena-trump-putin-helsinki-interpreter/580267/
Subpoena the Interpreter
There are real costs to such a movebut the public needs to know what was said between Trump and Putin.
Jan 14, 2019
David Frum
Now Congress faces a very hard question: Subpoena President Donald Trumps translator, or not?
On Saturday, The Washington Posts Greg Miller reported new details of the extreme things done by Trump to conceal his talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin from even the senior-most members of Trumps own administration. Trump even reportedly seized the interpreters notes after one of his meetings, the Trump-Putin sit-down at the Hamburg G20 meeting in July 2017. Even more disturbingly, Trump and Putin met privately a second time at Hamburgwith no American present. In an act of astonishing recklessness, Trump relied entirely on the Russian interpreter, preventing any U.S. record-keeping at all.
All this would be unusual enough for any president. It is more than suspicious for a president being formally investigated by the FBI as a possible Russian-intelligence asset.
Concern focuses most on Trumps meetings with Putin at the Helsinki summit in July 2018. The Russian president, and the American president helped into office by the Russian president, met for two hours with no aides. No agenda was published before the meeting, no communiqué issued afterward. The Russian side later claimed that a number of agreements had been reached at the summit. Nobody on the American side seemed to know whether this was true. At a press conference four days after the meeting, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said, Im not in a position to either understand fully or talk about what happened in Helsinki.
Theres only one American who does know: Marina Gross, the professional interpreter who assisted Trump.
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It is time to subpoena the Helsinki interpreter (Original Post)
dalton99a
Sep 2019
OP
mopinko
(69,806 posts)1. coats is gonna make a great witness.
Dennis Donovan
(18,770 posts)2. Older ABC article on Marina Gross
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/interpreter-marina-gross-notes-trumps-putin-meeting/story?id=60374126
Marina Gross, a State Department interpreter, was the only other American in the room during President Donald Trump's one-on-one meeting with Russian President Putin in Helsinki last summer.
ABC News has learned new details about the 64-year-old interpreter with the State Department's Office of Language Services who is at the center of the political storm over what she might know about the private conversations Trump held with Putin during their meeting in Helsinki last summer.
Neither Gross nor her close family members provided comment for this story when contacted by ABC News.
Veteran interpreters are concerned that a Congressional subpoena of Gross or her notes of the meeting would set a dangerous precedent. They also question whether her interpreting notes would contain actual contents of the meeting itself.
WHO IS MARINA GROSS?
Born in Russia, Gross was in her mid-20's when she and her family members immigrated to the United States in the late 1980s in the waning days of the Soviet Union.
In the 1990s Gross began interpreting for the State Department as a contract interpreter.
Well respected, she was later hired by the State Department and currently works as one of two Russian staff interpreters at the departments Office of Language Services.
</snip>
Marina Gross, a State Department interpreter, was the only other American in the room during President Donald Trump's one-on-one meeting with Russian President Putin in Helsinki last summer.
ABC News has learned new details about the 64-year-old interpreter with the State Department's Office of Language Services who is at the center of the political storm over what she might know about the private conversations Trump held with Putin during their meeting in Helsinki last summer.
Neither Gross nor her close family members provided comment for this story when contacted by ABC News.
Veteran interpreters are concerned that a Congressional subpoena of Gross or her notes of the meeting would set a dangerous precedent. They also question whether her interpreting notes would contain actual contents of the meeting itself.
WHO IS MARINA GROSS?
Born in Russia, Gross was in her mid-20's when she and her family members immigrated to the United States in the late 1980s in the waning days of the Soviet Union.
In the 1990s Gross began interpreting for the State Department as a contract interpreter.
Well respected, she was later hired by the State Department and currently works as one of two Russian staff interpreters at the departments Office of Language Services.
</snip>
dalton99a
(81,065 posts)3. +1. She knows what was said in those two hours
It's reasonable to assume Putin has a recording
FakeNoose
(32,345 posts)4. Marina Gross attended at least 2 meetings between Chump and Pootie
She was his official interpreter in Hamburg as well as Helsinki. After both meetings Chump took her notes and made her swear to secrecy. What happened to her "notes"? I'm willing to bet they're on the same secret national security server as the transcripts for Chump's phone calls to Ukraine.
There's a good chance that Marina Gross is terrified, and she may well prefer jail to testifying against Chump.
northoftheborder
(7,566 posts)5. She should be subpoenaed but given security at once
Mister Ed
(5,896 posts)6. Heavy security. n/t
Hermit-The-Prog
(33,033 posts)7. so heavy that we don't even know if or when she's subpoenaed