House intelligence committee chair Adam Schiff taking legal steps to try to compel administration officials to turn over documents

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Democrats are seeking “the best way” to force Donald Trump to reveal what he discussed in private meetings with Russian president Vladimir Putin, the chair of the powerful House intelligence committee said on Saturday.

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Adam Schiff of California told Politico he met the House general counsel, Douglas Letter, to “determine the best way to find out what took place in those private meetings – whether it’s by seeking the interpreter’s testimony, the interpreter’s notes, or other means”.

The House general counsel provides bipartisan legal advice and representation to members and committees.

Letter was appointed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi in December, becoming, in the words of the National Law Journal, “chief point person for any litigation involving enforcement of subpoenas targeting Trump administration officials and others in the president’s orbit”.

In January, the Washington Post reported that Trump had taken unusual steps to keep private translator’s notes from meetings with Putin.

After a meeting at the G20 summit in Hamburg in 2017 that was also attended by then secretary of state Rex Tillerson, the paper reported, Trump took “possession of the notes of his own interpreter and instruct[ed] the linguist not to discuss what had transpired with other administration officials”.

In Helsinki in July 2018, Trump and Putin met with only translators present.

Debate over whether translators can or should be compelled to turn over their notes has risen following the Democratic takeover of the House, which put Schiff and other committee chairs in position to ramp up investigations of Trump and his administration.

Last year, Schiff was among Democrats who called for Marina Gross, the translator in the Helsinki meeting, to testify before the House intelligence committee in private. Republicans who then controlled the panel rejected the request.

On Saturday Elliott Engel of New York, chair of the House foreign affairs committee, told Politico: “I’m not saying that I’m in favor of interpreters turning over all their notes, but I do think that it shouldn’t be up to the president to hide the notes.”

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He added: “All we want is for the American people to know the truth. I’m not out at all to get the president. I’m out to get the truth.”

The White House did not immediately comment.

At the time of the Post report, Trump told Fox News he was “not keeping anything under wraps, I couldn’t care less”. His counsellor Kellyanne Conway said the president wanted to avoid leaks.

Trump also angrily rejected a New York Times report, published shortly before the Post report, that he had been the subject of a counterintelligence investigation into whether he was, unwittingly or not, a Russian intelligence asset.

Special counsel Robert Mueller is widely thought to be close to concluding his investigation of Russian election interference, links between Trump aides and Moscow and potential obstruction of justice by the president.