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Bloomberg
The Trump administration won the dismissal of a lawsuit claiming it violated federal record-keeping requirements by conducting off-the-books diplomacy with Ukrainian officials — the same conduct at the centre of the president’s impeachment. US District Judge James E Boasberg threw out the suit, saying the alleged actions by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, among others, were isolated and didn’t appear to be part of a formal “policy or practice†that could be found to violate the Federal Records Act.
“To the extent that a few isolated actions involved some State Department personnel, plaintiffs cannot transform an allegedly brazen compliance violation into a ‘policy or practice’ claim simply by slapping the ‘policy or practice’ label on it,†Boasberg said in the decision.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington claimed in the suit that Pompeo signed off on the back-channel effort, allowing then-Special Envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker to use “secret and irregular†talks to bypass record-keeping requirements and clearing then-EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland to block transcription of Trump’s call with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.