Trump Wins Suit Over Records of Meetings With World Leaders

(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump won dismissal of a lawsuit filed by watchdog groups that accused him and his staff of violating federal law by failing to keep proper records of his interactions with foreign leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington dismissed the suit on Monday, saying she lacks authority “to oversee the president’s day-to-day compliance with the statutory provisions in this case.”

The suit, filed in May 2019 by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive, accused Trump of violating the Presidential Records Act on several occasions, including by confiscating an interpreter’s notes of a meeting with Putin in July 2017.

The complaint also alleged possible violations when Trump met with Putin in Helsinki in July 2018, when the president’s interpreter left a meeting “with pages of notes” that were reportedly never shared with anyone. The plaintiffs claim Trump left policy makers in the dark by attending a crucial nuclear summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un in Hanoi, Vietnam, without appearing to take any notes for the historical record.

In her decision, Berman Jackson said earlier rulings by the federal appeals court in Washington, stemming from a similar allegation against former President George H.W. Bush, blocked lawsuits over suspected violations of the records law. Courts can only be used to ascertain what types of documents a president intends to preserve, she wrote.

“There is no factual allegation in the complaint that anyone in the White House has actually ‘classified’ a record of a meeting with a foreign leader as a presidential record,” the judge said.

CREW and the National Security Archive previously sued Trump for allegedly allowing White House personnel to communicate through a messaging application “that automatically deleted messages as soon as they are read,” according to Monday’s ruling. The federal appeals court in Washington ultimately ruled it didn’t have the power to get involved.

“We were obviously disappointed,” CREW spokeswoman Jenna Grande said in an email. “Our legal team is currently reviewing it.”

The president has been accused of being too cozy with Putin, whose government was found to have interfered in the 2016 election to help get him elected. Trump has said he believes Putin’s claim that Russia wasn’t involved -- a claim that’s contradicted by findings of U.S. intelligence agencies.

To contact the reporter on this story: Erik Larson in New York at elarson4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Steve Stroth

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