Can Congress Subpoena Trump’s Interpreter?

At first, it was mostly just Chuck Schumer calling for hearings over what happened at the Trump – Putin summit. As Allahpundit noted last night, unless there are a lot of Republicans willing to go along with the idea (including key committee leaders) that’s not likely to happen. But now some additional Democrats are jumping on the dogpile and getting more specific than simply calling for “hearings.” Joe Kennedy and Jeanne Shaheen want to know what was discussed during the private, two-hour conversation between Presidents Trump and Putin. But if neither of the leaders are choosing to divulge that information, how do they plan to get it? By issuing a subpoena for Trump’s interpreter. (Washington Times)

At least two Congressional Democrats want President Trump’s interpreter to testify about his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
So curious are Democrats to learn what was said in Monday’s private meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin — there were no other officials in the room; only each man’s translator — that Sen. Jeanne Shaheen and Rep. Joe Kennedy III have each made the unusual request.
“I’m calling for a hearing with the U.S. interpreter who was present during President Trump’s meeting with Putin to uncover what they discussed privately. This interpreter can help determine what @POTUS shared/promised Putin on our behalf,” Ms. Shaheen, New Hampshire Democrat, wrote Tuesday on Twitter.

I’m calling for a hearing with the U.S. interpreter who was present during President Trump’s meeting with Putin to uncover what they discussed privately. This interpreter can help determine what @POTUS shared/promised Putin on our behalf.
— Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (@SenatorShaheen) July 17, 2018

This idea should immediately set off some alarm bells for anyone following the story. Keep in mind that we’re not talking about asking the President what he said or even issuing a subpoena for his aides who may have been in on the plans for the meeting. The interpreter is not part of the administration in any fashion. She’s a person who is literally acting as a tool, performing a function which can be (and while crudely, sometimes actually is) done by a computer application. She has no input on what is discussed and is hardly an expert on what may or may not be appropriate in such a negotiation.

To get to the title question, can they do that? I’ve been doing some checking and the short answer seems to be yes. Criminal courts of law have actually been ordering testimony from interpreters increasingly in recent years, but this creates a serious dilemma for the interpreter. Offering such testimony is a violation of one of the profession’s fundamental guidelines, known as the tenet of confidentiality. These situations are of such concern that MasterWord, an industry organization representing language professionals, has issued guidance on how to respond to subpoenas.

The bottom line is that compliance with the law and lawful orders of the courts overrides the professional requirement to adhere to the tenet of confidentiality, but the interpreters put themselves at risk of losing future work. They are advised to let their employers know when a subpoena is received to allow them the opportunity to respond or object if appropriate.

But those are criminal court cases. Refusing to cooperate could be seen as obstruction of justice. What about a congressional subpoena? There’s no formal finding that any law has been broken so the testimony isn’t going to be used for purposes of prosecution. This simply falls under the category of oversight, which is a nicer way of saying that some of the members of Congress are being nosy about what was said during a private conversation. Is the interpreter still bound to comply? A refusal could result in a contempt of Congress charge I suppose, but would they really toss the interpreter in jail for refusing to violate their professional code of conduct?

As mentioned above, this remains hypothetical for now. I don’t know if the GOP majority is going to be in the mood to cross swords with President Trump at that level. It could also be seen as the legislative branch usurping the power of the White House to handle foreign diplomatic relations. But if they do decide to go along with this scheme I certainly wouldn’t want to be that translator. She’s going to be in a very difficult position.

It’s quite obvious now that Putin has evidence on top Uniparty members of the US ruling class.

Putin knows of course that all information he conveys to President Trump will be validated by the President’s own resources. Putin’s evidence will not be accepted at face value, it must be verified, confirmed, validated, cross-checked before it can be admitted and survive in a US court of law.

The shrill desperation of Trump’s adversaries is a red flag. They are scared beyond all reason. They are trying to save their own hides.

The entire Russian Collusion was their only hope of creating a false narrative to make it seem Trump was somehow implicated in a crime against the US. But they have no evidence that Donald Trump was ever involved in anything they allege.

So now they are running scared because they don’t know what the President knows from Putin. They are in a panic because they must know what the President knows so that they can prepare a counterattack, a counter-narrative.

*********************************************
EVERYTHING BELOW IS SPECULATIVE BUT IS SUPPORTED BY BITS AND PIECES OF EVIDENCE THAT INDICATE WHAT HAPPENED.

My guess is the group of coup plotters has spent an enormous time examining and attempting to fabricate a false counter-narrative which they know will not hold water because there are other arguments and genuine evidence that will destroy any fabricated evidence. Should this be the case, the coup members need to be extremely careful because any successful challenge to their fabricated material can result in serious charges of treason, sedition, conspiracy or all of the above against the coup persons presenting such fabricated documents.

What kind of evidence can be fabricated?

A Manafort false confession?

A Michael Cohen false confession?

A false cable between SVR/GRU (former KGB) and people tied to Mr. Trump confirming that a system for altering votes is active and ready?

I will bet there is a war room run by deep state operatives who are trying their damnedest to get Mueller ‘evidence’ that President Trump is in collusion with Putin. Think of the yellow urine (”Pee-Pee”) dossier and how it was fabricated and debunked. One can imagine that deep state persons are working 24/7 to come up with an airtight but false fabricated narrative of how the President stole the election from Clinton. But they can’t do it. They want more time to invent something out of whole cloth that will be far better than the Pee-Pee Dossier. But they are out of time.

I will go a step further based on some knowledge I have. The Clinton camp thought they had the election rigged in her favor through the Soros controlled GEMS (Global Election Management System). But any illicit GEMS satellite transmissions may have been jammed on the night of November 8, 2016. So it was a case that Hillary’s people were unable to steal the election from Donald Trump by altering vote totals via satellite transmissions. Instead, they claim Donald Trump stole the election they were rigging by upsetting their attempt to cheat out a victory.

The election thieves were denied the prize, so what do they do? Why blame Donald Trump of course for stealing their opportunity to cheat. This is criminal logic. Criminals always think they can do what they want because if they don’t do it, the other side will. So if the other side catches them in the act of stealing and stops their attempt to steal, then that other side is ‘guilty’ of ‘robbing’ the opportunity to cheat. Ergo, Donald Stump stole the election. But the Russians had data that countered that narrative so the accusation had to take the form “Donald Trump and the Russians stole the election”. Such insanity is prevalent among criminals and with a media aiding and abetting this sort of criminal thinking, a grand LIE gets hatched that takes a life of its own. Of course, if the LIE succeeds, then the criminals write the history as they want to see it written and no one will ever know the truth.

There may have been other factors that helped counter Clinton cheating such as efforts in critical swing districts to bypass electronic vote scanners and touch screens by going to paper ballots. Normally paper ballots are easy for democrats to defeat but if they were relying on electronic vote machine rigging, they would have been caught flatfooted if some of the critical voting booths went instead to paper ballots at the last minute. They wouldn’t be able to pull bags of paper ballots out of the woodwork to put the vote totals into Hillary’s column. But they tried anyway with the challenges by Jill Stein to ‘count the ballots’ but that didn’t work either.

My bet is the main factor would be signal jamming by sophisticated military groups. We know NYPD was aware of the Weiner laptop. We have heard the NYPD Chiefs reacted in horror at what was found. We have heard that many influential military, Secret Service, NYPD, intel and law enforcement members vowed to do stop any cheating.

If the above scenario is fairly accurate, the defeat of the criminal deep state hinges on what is revealed from the Weiner laptop.

And IF the truth ever comes out enough to defeat this ‘deep state’ of persons that think themselves entitled to power, then Americans need to have a thorough top-to-bottom review and reform of election integrity and safeguards. At the state level, I personally have witnessed elections get stolen and I have followed how the methods of stealing get copied and spread throughout the nation. It needs to stop!

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