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WASHINGTON – President Trump has invoked the privilege of the executive to prevent Congress from having access to documents explaining how a citizenship issue had been added to the 2020 census before a committee vote of the House of Representatives to recommend that two secretaries be contempt of Congress on this matter.
In a letter to the Chair of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, Maryland Representative Elijah E. Cummings, the Department of Justice said that Mr. Trump had decided to invoke his secrecy powers to provide a legal basis to challenge the panel assignment for census related materials.
In response, Cummings postponed the vote on Wednesday to recommend that the House hold Attorney General William P. Barr and Secretary of Commerce Wilbur L. Ross Jr., with contempt. Cummings described the move as "another example of the general mistrust of constitutionally mandated constitutional responsibilities of the Congress," adding that it raised a question: "What are we hiding?"
In its letter, the Department of Justice stated that it had already released many documents in response to the subpoena, but that it had to keep certain information confidential to protect the candor of internal deliberations and between Lawyer and his client.
The battle around the census is mainly based on the Liberals' suspicions that asking respondents to say whether they were US citizens could be a deliberate ploy to tilt the re-election of seats in the House every ten years, reducing the number of immigrants.
One version of this idea is that people who lack documents to legally reside in the United States would be afraid to submit their questionnaires, which would result in under-enumeration of the population.
The Census Bureau estimated that asking all US residents if they were citizens could cause a 5.8% drop in the response rate of non-citizens, which, in the opinion of the Democrats, would skew the distribution of seats in the House in favor of Republicans, while depriving the states of federal resources. The distribution of constituencies is based on the gross population and not on the number of eligible voters.
In an affidavit before Congress, Mr. Ross stated that he had decided to add the "only" question in response to a request by the Department of Justice in December 2017 for data to enforce the 1965 voting rights law. Three Federal trial judges ruled that the evidence on the record demonstrates that Mr. Ross was concealing himself.
New evidence extracted from the computer files of a deceased Republican strategist suggests that the real reason for the administration was to collect information that would enable states to determine constituencies by counting only eligible voters rather than, as it is currently, all residents. It would be, says the strategist, "advantageous for whites Republicans and non-Hispanics".
A vote by the committee to recommend that Mr. Barr and Mr. Ross be held in contempt of not fully complying with his census subpoena would be the last step taken by the Democrat-led House to step up the pressure on Mr. Trump and his entourage to provide critical witnesses, documents, and other information that could fuel a slew of House investigations into the conduct and policies of the President.
Wednesday's actions on the Oversight Committee may mark the second time this year that a committee has recommended that members of Trump's cabinet be held in contempt of Congress. The Judicial Committee had sought a contempt resolution against Mr. Barr for refusing to provide the committee with an unredacted version of the Mueller report, as well as evidence to support the findings. of the special advocate.
House leaders have decided for the time being not to vote in favor of condemning Mr. Barr after the justice department began Monday to share some of the special advocate's testimony with the committee. For the same reason, it is not yet clear whether the Judiciary Committee of the House will use its authority to take legal action against it.
During the Oversight of the Oversight Committee, members protested against Mr. Barr's instructions to a subordinate involved in the census not to follow the subpoena to compel the person to appear for a statement. based on a long standing rule of the House that government lawyers are not allowed to accompany a witness. deposit room.
The Trump administration issued a memo Tuesday stating that the House rule was an unconstitutional intrusion into the power of the president to ensure that his subordinates do not disclose information that may be subject to the privilege of power. executive.
The Democrats also complain that Mr. Ross has prevented the committee from having access to all the information covered by his summons from his department, which houses the Census Bureau.
Republicans protested the committee's action and tried in vain to prevent it from advancing, saying the Democrats were rushing to try to influence the Supreme Court before that this one is pronounced. The Trump administration has described the surveillance investigation as an attempt to interfere in the legal battle. Democrats initially tried to launch the investigation last year, while they were in the minority, but the majority of Republicans refused to pursue it. In January, when Democrats got a majority in the House, Mr. Cummings said he would make the investigation a priority.
Overall, the work of committees and the entire House this week is part of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's strategy of delaying calls to quickly indict Mr. Trump by demonstrating that there are other ways to hold him publicly accountable.
The House vote on Tuesday should speed up the process by which other committees involved in disputes with the Trump administration can ask the courts to exercise their supervisory powers.
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