A. G. BARR AND SECRETARY ROSS EXPECTED TO BE HELD IN CONTEMPT

… Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.),

The population count from the Census Survey is used to allocate $800 billion a year in federal funding

The chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), said last week that the panel would vote to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt.  This would be for failing to comply with a bipartisan subpoena for documents on a Trump administration plan to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

A hearing on the new evidence is scheduled in federal court in Manhattan this week.

Opponents of the question have argued that history shows that it will reduce immigrant’s voluntary responses to the census survey among all immigrant communities.  This would result in an undercount in the areas where they live.

The population count from the ten-year Census is primarily used to allocate $800 billion a year in federal funding and for determining congressional representation and redistricting.

A key issue in this challenge to the citizenship question is how the question came to be added.  Ross originally told Congress that the decision to add it came solely in response to a December 2017 request from the Justice Department.  However, the lawsuits later produced emails showing that Ross, who oversees the Census Bureau, had personally been pushing for the added question for months before, not from the Justice department.

Democrats on the Oversight Committee had seriously grilled Ross about the question extensively, with several Democrats asking whether he had lied under oath, and one that demanded his resignation.

In a 23-to-14 vote in April, the Oversight Committee authorized chairman Cummings to issue subpoenas for a deposition of John Gore.  Gore was the principal deputy assistant attorney general to Barr and Ross for documents related to the 2020 Census decision.  The committee also met with Gore on the matter, but Cummings said Gore refused to answer more than 150 questions, citing on-going litigation.

Three federal judges have already struck down the Ross Census question, said that Ross’s actions were in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.

The Supreme Court heard the case in April.  Evidence in the case concluded with oral arguments, and it appeared that the conservative majority seemed to be inclined to agree with Ross that the decision to add the question was within the authority of the commerce secretary.

However, Democratic lawmakers have accused the Trump administration of stonewalling their efforts to investigate Ross’s 2018 decision to add the citizenship question.  Secretary Ross says it needs the question to better enforce the Voting Rights Act.  This is not true.  A citizenship question was removed from the survey in 1950, and the responses to the census survey by the nation’s immigrants increased dramatically.

Last week, new evidence was found suggesting that the citizenship question was actually crafted by a long-time Republican strategist  The question was crafted for giving an electoral advantage to Republicans and whites in America.

The evidence was found in the files of that Republican redistricting strategist by the wife of Thomas Hofeller, after his death last August.  According to the lawyers that challenged the question, the files reveal that Hofeller “played a significant role in orchestrating the addition of the citizenship question to the 2020 Decennial Census to create a structural electoral advantage for, in his own words, ‘Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites.’ ”  The lawyers also argued that Trump administration officials had purposely obscured Hofeller’s role in court proceedings.

“Unfortunately, your actions are part of a pattern,” chairman Cummings wrote to Barr and Ross. “The Trump administration has been engaged in one of the most unprecedented coverups since Watergate, extending from the White House to multiple federal agencies and departments of the government and across numerous investigations.”

The escalation between the Oversight Committee and Trump’s two Cabinet members comes just weeks after the House Judiciary Committee also voted to hold Barr in contempt. This was for Barr's refusing to turn over special counsel Robert Mueller III’s full, unredacted report. The full House is expected to vote on that contempt citation next week.

Here is what a 'contempt of Congress' could mean for AG Barr

The House Judiciary Committee has already voted to recommend that the House of Representatives hold Attorney General William P. Barr in contempt of Congress.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) had been pressing Democratic leadership for that vote.  This so the Democrats could take Barr to civil court to try to force his compliance.

Democrats on the judiciary panel are hoping to do the same with Donald McGahn, the former White House counsel who refused to testify or turn over documents.  McGahn was a central witness in the Mueller report.

Democratic leaders could put the citations together in a massive contempt vote next week.

Attorney General William Barr could then go down as one of the most dishonest US Attorneys General in US history.

Copyright G. Ater 2019