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Congressional Democrats continue their efforts to have the State Department interpreter during the Surrender Summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin—arguably the only disinterested person in the room—tell what she knows, whether by testifying or providing her notes from the discussion. Republicans in the House squashed the effort by their colleagues with a vote. In the Senate, they're either reverting to their generally helpless routine or saying the secret two-hour Trump-Putin meeting in which Trump may or may not have handed over the keys to the nation is not all that significant.
“The world will never know,” Sen. Jim Lankford (R-Okla.) told reporters Tuesday. “Because there were no note takers, the Russians will say, ‘This is what was said,’ and there’s no way to be able to counter that.”
“I don’t understand the value of that two-hour meeting,” said Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.). “But that’s the president’s decision to make, not mine.”
Outside observers and constitutional scholars, however, think it needs to happen even though they're a bit unsure of how it would all unfold. Laurence Tribe, the Carl M. Loeb university professor and a professor of constitutional law at Harvard University, says that the "legal territory is unsettled. […] I don't think there is any authoritative on-point precedent either way." Nonetheless, "I strongly favor this effort to subpoena the U.S. interpreter," said Tribe. "There is a lot to gain and nothing to lose by at least seeking such testimony."
Others point out that it's likely the White House would just claim executive privilege to keep her from testifying or handing over her notes.
It's not a given that it would work, because it has traditionally applied to communication between the president and advisers. There's reason to believe that there's a compelling national security interest in overriding that claim. But you have to have a Congress intent on pursuing it.
Here Tribe's final assessment is probably most on point. He says he "would be surprised if the current congressional leadership has the guts to try it."