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The Justice Department on Thursday rejected the request of a House committee asking for more documents on the Trump administration's decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, which will likely result in a new contempt quote against Attorney General William Barr.
In a letter to House Monitoring Committee Chair Elijah Cummings, Deputy Attorney General Stephen Boyd said the documents the Democrat-led committee had summoned could not be made public because they were protected. by "professional secrecy, the product doctrine of the work of the prosecutor. "
"Given the accommodation efforts made by the department, we believe that a vote on the contempt would be quite premature," says the letter, citing "eight submissions to the Committee in the context of the continuous production of continuous documents, totaling more than 17,000 pages ". The DOJ received the request for a committee document in February and the subpoena that followed two months later.
FEDERAL JUDGE PROHIBITS TRUMP ADMINISTRATION TO ADD CITIZENSHIP ISSUE TO 2020 CENSUS
Boyd noted that "the ministry has also identified tens of thousands of more responsive pages that it is producing" and has made available two senior officials for interviews.
CummingsD-MD said the panel would vote shortly on the contempt measures against Barr Wil and Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross unless specific documents are received on Thursday.
A spokesman for the Department of Commerce in an email said the secretary had "outraged the barracks" and pointed out that the department had delivered about 14,000 pages of documents. The spokesman said repeated requests to the commission to explain its needs regarding this specific information had never been met.
Ross also testified before the committee for nearly seven hours earlier this year, the spokesman said, adding that the ministry plans to make available three of its senior officials for interviews in the next three weeks.
A Cummings representative did not immediately respond to Fox News's request for comment, but in a statement released earlier this month, he stated that the fact that Barr and Ross did not respond to the quotation from Appearing in Oversight was part of the usual pattern of administration. "Concealment" and challenge Congressional authority over constitutional oversight.
THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION HIGHLIGHTS THE FIGHT AGAINST THE CITIZENSHIP ISSUE OF THE CENSUS, TOWARDS THE SUPREME COURT
"This hiding is directed from above," said Cummings, pointing out that Trump was committed to fighting all Congressional summonses and had refused to work on legislative priorities, such as Infrastructure, until the Congress puts an end to the investigations of its administration.
The House Judiciary Committee voted last month to condemn Barr in contempt of Congress as part of a separate legal battle against the Trump administration to gain access to Special Adviser Robert Mueller's report. on the interference of Russia in the 2016 election.
A vote by the entire House would be necessary to condemn Barr and Ross in disregard of the census question.
The Supreme Court is considering the citizenship issue in a decision expected later this year.
The committee approved subpoenas on the census issue in April. The Democrats said that they wanted specific documents to try to understand why Mr. Ross had added the citizenship issue to the 2020 census, and that the Trump administration had refused to provide the documents despite the requests. repeated.
Ross told the committee that the decision to add the question was based on a request from the Department of Justice to help enforce the law on the right to vote.
Cummings disputed this, citing documents uncovered last month suggesting that the real reason the administration wanted to add the citizenship issue was to help gerrymander's legislative district officials in an openly partisan and racist way. .
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Democrats said the issue of citizenship could reduce census participation in highly immigrant communities, which would affect representation and access to federal funds.
Jake Gibson of Fox News and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
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