Dammit! I should’ve gone with that, especially since I started the bit about the 2020 electing being “Schrödinger’s election” thanks to the way the pubbies who got elected on those ballots swear those same ballots are invalid for the presidential election.
There was an interpreter there, right? So at least one other person knows what was said at the meeting. If I’m remembering correctly, it was the only time a president met with a foreign leader without disclosing anything that was talked about. What kind of rules is the interpreter under as far as sharing that information? Will they ever be able to?
Maybe only Putin’s interpreter. In which case, I think we’ll never know,unless Putin wants us to know.
Don’t you think Vlad has already had that guy killed?
And/or Trump
I should have done some research before asking my question. Sorry, I was cooking dinner and distracted. 
Marina Gross was Trump’s interpreter at the meeting.
According to the article, her notes wouldn’t be of much use as they aren’t verbatim quotes of what was said. But she still knows what they talked about. She just can’t divulge it because it’s classified and since she’s not Trump, she would probably go to prison if she did. I wonder if those notes are among the documents Trump still has?
I wonder if she still works at the state department, and if so whether Biden has asked her by his office to have a little chat.
Even if everything that Trump and Putin discussed was legit, Biden should know about it given that with the war in Ukraine, any information about Putin’s mindset and intentions is important.
This is called ‘Need To Know’.
I can’t keep track of all of the threads.
“There’s nobody that’s tougher than me. Nobody’s tougher than me,” Trump said in an undated clip aired on CNN on Tuesday.
This isn’t the first time Trump has repeated something he’d just said. I want to call him ‘Donny Two Times’.
“I speak redundantly. Redundantly! Nobody is more redundant than I am. One time a man, a strong man, a Marine, he came up to me, with tears in his eyes, and said, ‘Sir, sir, thank you for being redundant, and I also wanted to thank you for being redundant.’ I am bigly redundant.”
I doubt it. I’m sure that interpreters at that level are under the same professional obligation as doctors and lawyers and priests–that is, you don’t mention it, outside of “Yes, as you can see on TV, I did represent Mr. Smith. No, I cannot tell you what we discussed in private.”
I’m a lawyer, so that would be my response. But I can easily see an interpreter adopting it. In fact, if I was a world leader, I would expect an interpreter to.
But even though the interpreter wouldn’t be free to talk about it publicly, wouldn’t any meeting a president had with a foreign leader be treated like official documents, and therefore “property” of the government? Shouldn’t the current president be able to ask the interpreter for an account of the conversation?
I honestly thought you were going for “at Mar-a-Lago.”
Yes, TFG is secretly keeping interpreters in boxes in store rooms at Mar a Lago! NARA has been trying to get them back for years, but he claims they’re his property. There’s a good chance he’s keeping some in Trump Tower and Bedminster, too.
If she gets an umbrella for Christmas, in a box with a Russian postmark, I would advise her to dispose of it asap, preferably without touching it.
I assume Marina can divulge the conversation to Biden, and I hope he has already had a conversation with her. ETA. What Buck Godot said.
A court order could make her more talkative, too. I am aware of no “speaker-interpreter” legal privilege, even if the person speaking is POTUS.
I agree with Buck_Godot. The President has Need To Know because of National Security. There should be no need for a court order. The translator was working for the government in a secure environment. There is no reason for her to withhold any information upon the request of the President.
I find it analogous to the office of White House Counsel. As I understand things, the White House Counsel works for the office of the presidency, not for the individual who happens to hold that office at a given time.
After Woodward was shown Kim’s love letters, and Trump told Woodward to not tell anyone…
Trump asked him
During his visits to the White House, Trump asked Woodward about the documents, and if he had made “a Photostat of them or something”. Woodward replied that he had dictated them into his recorder.
A photostat? A PHOTOSTAT? This particular technology was superseded by xerography in the 1950’s. Trump is burbling on about 70 year old “Photostat” Jesus.