WASHINGTON _ Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is being sued over allegedly failing to preserve official notes about President Donald Trump's meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and a court ruled Wednesday that the case could move forward.
That means Pompeo must either provide evidence that he complied with the Federal Records Act, which requires the State Department to collect and preserve interpreter notes, or else argue that he is not obligated to do so.
Democracy Forward and American Oversight, two progressive watchdog organizations, filed the lawsuit in June after public reporting emerged claiming that Trump had collected notes from interpreters and directed them not to discuss the contents of the meetings. The court filing called it "unusual, and in some cases extreme, measures to conceal the details of these meetings."
