Justice Department won’t prosecute former Trump Commerce chief Ross for misleading Congress on census issue

WASHINGTON – The Justice Department will not prosecute former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross for distorting the rationale for a citizenship question proposed in last year’s census, according to the Commerce Department’s Inspector General.

Ross “distorted the full rationale for reinstating the citizenship issue” in two House committee appearances in March 2018, a letter from the department’s watchdog to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and the House Oversight Committee chair Carolyn Maloney, both New York Democrats.

Inspector General Peggy Gustafson said his office presented its investigation to the Public Integrity Section of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, but the case was dismissed for prosecution.

Biden’s Justice Department declined to comment on the Inspector General’s letter.

Ross told Congress he decided to add the question after receiving a memorandum from the Department of Justice in December 2017 stating that citizenship data was needed to properly enforce federal election laws. But he later said during a trial on the matter that he began to think about the citizenship issue soon after taking office and suggested that the Justice Department request it.

The letter from the Inspector General stated that “the evidence shows that there were important communications related to the citizenship issue between the then secretary, his staff and other government officials between March 2017 and September 2017, which was long before the DOJ memorandum of request ”.

In June 2019, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration could not include the citizenship question on the census form that goes to every American household, giving a victory to the populous, predominantly Democratic states that said the question would discourage legal and illegal immigrants from responding and make the population count less accurate.

A census is required every 10 years by the Constitution, and its results determine the size of the congressional delegation and the redistribution of each state. The data is also used to calculate a local government’s share of funds for many federal programs.