Wilbur Ross discussed the issue of census citizenship with Steve Bannon: NPR

Trade Secretary Wilbur Ross now remembers talking to a White House official about the possibility of adding a question on citizenship to the 2020 census. It's according to a new document of the court of public prosecutors that confirms the conversations between senior officials during the first months of the Trump administration.

This disclosure contradicts the testimony of the March Congress of Ross. As head of the Department of Commerce, Ross oversees the Census Bureau and approves the addition of a controversial issue of US citizenship status to the forms for the next national enumeration.

"Has the President or a member of the White House discussed with you or any of your team members the addition of the citizenship issue?" Representative Grace Meng, D-N.Y., Asked Ross at a House Subcommittee hearing on Trade, Justice, Science and Related Credits on March 20.

"I'm not aware of that," said Ross.

Ross also told legislators that the Department of Justice had "initiated" the response request with a letter to the Census Bureau in December 2017. He had approved this request because the Ministry needed answers to better enforce the law. the right to vote. protections against discrimination of racial and linguistic minorities.

"We are responding only to the request of the Justice Department," Ross said at the March 20 hearing, after the Republic's representative, José Serrano, DN.Y., asked if President Trump or someone else at the White House had asked him to add a question on citizenship. status.

The revelations in the paper released Thursday, as well as previously released documents in the context of the six lawsuits that the Trump administration faces over the issue of citizenship, demonstrate that this was not the case . They contradict a chronology that Ross described in Congress about how the question was added to the census.

In a court document written in August, the administration's lawyers wrote that "the defendants can not confirm that the secretary spoke to Steve Bannon about the issue of citizenship." They also said they could not confirm when similar conversations between Ross and US Attorney General Jeff Sessions took place before a discussion in August 2017.

Lawyers now write in the new document that discussions on a citizenship issue between Ross and Sessions took place in spring 2017 and "at a later date".

Secretary Ross remembers that Steven Bannon had telephoned Secretary Ross in the spring of 2017 to ask Secretary Ross when he was willing to talk to Kansas State Secretary Kris Kobach about the secretary's ideas. Kobach regarding a possible citizenship issue in the decennial census, "the lawyers write.

In an email addressed to Ross in July 2017, Kobach – the current Republican candidate for governorship of Kansas – proposed wording for a citizenship issue asking for the immigration status of non-citizens. Kobach wrote that he feared that "foreigners who do not actually reside in the United States will always be counted" in the census figures used to determine the number of Congressional seats that each state obtains after each enumeration. once a decade.

In a statement, Steven Choi, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, criticized Trump, saying Thursday's documents show that "his trade secretary has conspired with a white supremacist to fool the census" . The organization of Choi is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuits regarding the issue of citizenship.

"It's obvious that the administration hates immigrants and wants to deny the big blue states federal resources and political power by underestimating them in the census," said Choi. "It's a perversion of the Constitution for partisan gains and a direct attack against those who do not respond to Steve Bannon's skewed approval."

The document was posted on the website of the New York State Attorney General's Office, which represents the plaintiffs in one of six lawsuits filed by dozens of states, from cities and other groups who wish to have the status of US citizen defined by the administration. of the census. Critics fear that asking questions about the status of citizens in the current political climate will scare the household of non-citizens, which would affect the accuracy of the information collected.

Devin O 'Malley, a spokesman for the Department of Justice – who represents the administration in this legal battle – declined to comment. The Commerce Department and a spokesman for Steve Bannon did not immediately respond to the NPR investigation.

On Wednesday, the Office of the Inspector General of the Commerce Department, the agency's oversight group, announced that it planned to open an investigation into how the matter had been added. This follows a request from the Democrats of the Senate and the House of Representatives.