Census citizenship question: House Oversight states that the White House has "interfered" with Kris Kobach's interview

On May 21, MP Michael Purpura, Deputy Legal Counsel for the White House, on May 21 sent Elijah Cummings, chairman of the committee, a Democrat from Maryland, asking the commission to interview Kobach about the question of citizenship. who advise the President are confidential, and he would not be allowed to discuss these conversations during a transcribed interview. This position is consistent with the precedent of the Supreme Court and the long-standing practice of the two political parties' administrations. "

On Monday, White House lawyer Pat Cipollone wrote to Cummings on the same subject: "As you know, we have already informed Mr Kobach's lawyers that, taking into account the applicable legal principles, Kobach should not respond to his talk about his communications with the White House president or senior advisers. "

The letter continued: "Mr. Kobach's communications with the President or senior advisors of the White House are matters of executive privilege and the Committee has not demonstrated that his interests warranted the Abandon a claim of privilege ".

The White House declined to comment on this story.

In a statement on the publication of the memo, Cummings said: "These aggressive White House efforts to prevent Mr. Kobach from cooperating with the Committee raise important new questions about what the Trump administration is hiding – and why. "

He added: "They also questioned the Trump administration's assertions that the decision to add the citizenship issue had been" taken at the departmental level "rather than at the same time. White House."

Memo says Kobach has leaked new information

The committee memo states that Kobach nonetheless revealed new information to the panel regarding efforts to add a citizenship question to the census.

The census data serves as a basis for decisions on how to allocate federal resources and draw congressional districts. The survey aims to count the entire American population, not just the citizens.

The House Watch Committee According to a memo, Kobach said "to have discussed the addition of a question on citizenship much earlier than expected – during the presidential campaign more than a year before any request from the Ministry of Justice ". The memo quotes Kobach as saying: "I certainly discussed the issue with people during the campaign."

Kobach officially confirmed that he had personally met key officials of the White House just days after the president's inauguration to discuss the addition of the issue of citizenship, including the chief Staff Reince Priebus, Senior Advisor Steve Bannon and even President Trump himself. . "

The memo also states that the manner in which Kobach described his communications with Ross "seemed inconsistent" with the Secretary's testimony in March before the House Oversight Committee.

A spokesman for the Commerce Department reacted strongly by stating in a statement to CNN that "Secretary Ross had testified truthfully for nearly 7 hours in March," accusing Cummings of lying.

"Today, President Cummings has lied to the American people, and his committee has gone from empty stunt providers to major falsehoods," the spokesman said in a statement, adding that "Secretary Ross testified truth for nearly 7 hours in March. "The record shows beyond reasonable doubt that the question the secretary reinstated in the 2020 census does not constitute the series of questions that Kobach asked him to examine. It is even clear that, regardless of the cooperation of the Department and the provision of information in good faith, Committee will bring the facts. "

A spokesperson for the House of Democrats' Monitoring Committee responded in an email: "People can read the transcript of Mr. Kobach's interview and decide for themselves, if the department has nothing to hide. he has a simple way to prove it: stop retaining the documents, abandon the false declarations of cooperation, put an end to this dissimulation and start complying with this bipartisan subpoena. "

The note refers to Ross's statement at the hearing that he had "rejected Kobach's question" and then said: "However, when Mr. Kobach was questioned during his interview transcribed with the staff from the Committee on Secretary Ross's reaction to his proposal and his motives with regard to the addition of the question of citizenship, he denied that Secretary Ross had rejected it. "

Instead, the memo states that Kobach "told the staff of the Committee: if he had said absolutely no, I would not, no matter, you know, I think it's a bad idea, I probably would have remembered that, I do not remember his specific answer, but I'm pretty sure it was not, you know, absolutely not. "

The note contains excerpts from a transcript of the interview with Kobach, but not the full transcript.