Steve Bannon urged Wilbur Ross to examine the issue of census citizenship, says DOJ

The Justice Department acknowledged Thursday that Steve Bannon, former senior adviser to President Donald Trump, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions had discussed the idea of ​​adding a citizenship issue to the 2020 census with Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross .

On Thursday, in a court filing, the Justice Department said Ross remembered that Bannon had called him in the spring of 2017 to ask him if he would address Kris Kobach, secretary of the court. 39, State of Kansas, about the idea of ​​Kobach to add a question on citizenship in the decennial census. .

The document also stated that Ross "discussed the possibility of restoring a citizenship issue" at the 2020 census with Attorney General Jeff Sessions "at a later date" in the spring.

The discovery contradicts an assertion made by Ross, who oversees the Census Bureau, in his testimony before the Congress on March 20.

When asked if the President or someone from the White House had raised the possibility of adding a citizenship issue to the census during his testimony before Congress, Ross replied, " I'm not aware of that. "

During his testimony, Ross also claimed that the Department of Justice had asked for the addition of the question.

The Justice Ministry's Thursday complaint was a response to questions from New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood during the preliminary discovery phase of a lawsuit filed by New York and 16 other states for the purpose. to prevent the Trump administration from adding the question of citizenship.

Documents, including Ross's emails, released earlier this summer as part of the discovery of the lawsuit suggest that Ross wanted to add the question before the formal request of the Department of Justice.

In a May 2017 email to Earl Comstock, Director of the Bureau of Policy and Strategic Planning, Department of Commerce, Ross asked why "nothing has been done in response to my request, made several times ago. months, to include the question of citizenship. Why not?"

Comstock responded by assuring Ross that the department would find a way to get the census question.

"We have to work with the Department of Justice to get them to ask for citizenship to be converted back into a census, and we have cases in the courts to illustrate the fact that the DoJ has a legitimate need to include the issue." , wrote Comstock to Ross. "I will arrange a meeting with DoJ staff this week to discuss it."

Ross, who oversees the Census Bureau, announced Commerce's decision to add the issue in March, after the Justice Department sent a formal request to his department in December 2017.

The administration claims to have added the question to the 2020 census so that the Department of Justice can collect more data on citizenship and better enforce the 1965 voting rights law.

In April, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) said the addition of the question "blatantly" undermined the Constitution's mandate to count all people living in the United States.

The decennial census, which covers all US households, has not included citizenship issues since 1950.