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  2019;   2020; 


-- 2018 --

January 14: Meet Marina Gross, the interpreter who was the only other American in the room for Trump and Putin's 1-on-1 meeting in Helsinki

In the wake of President Donald Trump's controversial summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in July, Democratic members of Congress have called for the interpreter who sat in on the private, two-hour meeting with the two world leaders to answer questions.

Her name is Marina Gross.

Following a bombshell report from the Washington Post over the weekend that said Trump has gone to "extraordinary lengths" to conceal details of his conversations with Putin from senior officials in his administration, there are renewed calls for Gross to testify before lawmakers.

Gross, a translator for the State Department, can be seen sitting near Trump in images of the Helsinki, Finland meeting. Putin also had an interpreter at the meeting.

Gross has worked as a translator for the government for years, at least as far back as 2008 when she accompanied former First Lady Laura Bush to Sochi, Russia as her interpreter. She was also seen alongside former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Moscow in April 2017.

The decision to meet with Putin alone was broadly criticized, as the president's opponents felt he could not be trusted to speak privately with the Russian leader.

This view has been compounded by Trump's performance during a press conference with Putin in which he appeared to side with the Russian leader over the US intelligence community on the subject of Russian election interference. At the time, Trump said he didn't see "any reason" why Russia would interfere in the US electoral process, contradicting conclusions from US intelligence agencies as well as recent statements from Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.
https://www.businessinsider.com/meet-marina-gross-the-translator-for-the-trump-putin-helsinki-meeting-2018-7


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July 20: Lawmakers want Trump’s interpreter to testify. That might be unethical

Marina Gross, a State Department interpreter, was the only American in the room other than Trump during the private summit in Helsinki. A joint press conference that followed drew wide, bipartisan condemnation after Trump said he did not see any reason to believe that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, countering U.S. intelligence agencies’ findings. Trump walked the comments back Tuesday, saying he did believe Russia meddled in the election, but he has since issued conflicting statements on the issue.

In the chaotic fallout, lawmakers have escalated their calls to subpoena Gross, but interpreter groups have responded with alarm, saying that calling her to testify would threaten confidentiality, a cornerstone of their profession.

Why compel her to talk? Since the Helsinki meeting, the White House and Russian officials have given different accounts of Trump and Putin’s one-on-one conversation. Russian officials have claimed the meeting resulted in “verbal agreements,” but U.S. officials have not confirmed that.

Trump said on Twitter that the topics discussed included nuclear proliferation, cyber attacks, trade, Ukraine, Middle East peace and North Korea. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday the two leaders agreed to an “ongoing working level dialogue” and that the administration is considering inviting Putin to Washington this fall.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/putin-trump-russia-interpreter-marina-gross


-- 2019 --  

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January 14: Trump-Putin meeting: Democrats look to subpoena interpreter after reports US president seized notes of conversation

'Not only did I never work for Russia, I think it's a disgrace that you even asked that question'

Mr Trump was obliged to tell the media “he never worked” for Russia, following separate reports over the weekend – one saying the FBI had opened a probe into whether the US was a Russian asset after he fired James Comey, and a second saying he went to “extraordinary lengths” to conceal the details of his conversation with the Russian leader. In the second report, The Washington Post, said such was Mr Trump’s determination to limit who knew what he said to the Russian leader, he took the notes of his own interpreter and told the linguist “not to discuss what had transpired with other administration officials”.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-putin-meeting-interpreter-subpoena-marina-gross-russia-update-notes-a8727641.html

January 20: Even if investigators successfully gained access to Gross' notes "they wouldn't know what to do with them in the first place" ...

That's because as a matter of course the notes taken by professional interpreters are less about taking verbatim quotes than they are about getting the right inflection or meaning of a word or sentence.

Interpreters use symbols or meanings for words or proper context that are only comprehensible to them at that specific moment in time.

What might be more useful are the official classified documents, known as "memorandums of conversation" or MemCon's, that are compiled by interpreters using their handwritten notes.

MemCon's are ultimately only accessible by the Secretary of State and Obst said often times an interpreter will destroy the handwritten notes used during a meeting because they are no longer as relevant as the classified official document.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/interpreter-marina-gross-notes-trumps-putin-meeting/story?id=60374126

-- 2020 --

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