Trump asserts executive privilege to shield census documents from Congress as contempt vote looms via ReutersTV
WASHINGTON - A U.S. House committee voted on Wednesday in favor of holding two of President Donald Trump’s closest advisers in contempt of Congress for defying congressional subpoenas related to an effort to add a citizenship question to the 2020 U.S. Census.
“The president’s assertion does not change the fact that the attorney general and the secretary of commerce are sadly in contempt,” Cummings said during a nearly seven-hour meeting of the Democratic-led investigative panel. Traditionally, executive privilege has only been rarely invoked by presidents to keep other branches of government from getting access to certain internal executive branch information. Trump last month also invoked it to block a House panel from getting an unredacted copy of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election to boost Trump’s candidacy.
Democrats on the Oversight Committee were joined in supporting the contempt citations for Barr and Ross by Republican Representative Justin Amash, who is also the sole House Republican to call Trump’s behavior “impeachable.” The U.S. Supreme Court is due to rule by the end of this month on the administration’s appeal of a judge’s ruling that blocked the addition of the question as a violation of federal law. The judge’s ruling came in a lawsuit by a group of states and immigrant rights organizations arguing that including a citizenship question would frighten immigrants and Latinos from participating in the national population count, which takes place every ten years.
However, committee Democrats have said documents show Ross “began a secret campaign” to add the citizenship question to the census shortly after taking office and months before being formally asked to do so by the Justice Department.
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