Rep. Elijah Cummings
The Department of Justice on Tuesday threatened the House Oversight Committee with executive privilege over subpoenaed documents related to the 2020 census question if the panel votes to hold Attorney General Bill Barr in contempt.
Last week the Democrat-led House Oversight and Reform Committee, chaired by Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), moved to hold Attorney General Bill Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt over the panel’s investigation into the Trump administration’s plans to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.
Cummings wrote letters to both Barr and Ross letting them know his committee is moving forward with contempt votes after they defied congressional subpoenas for documents related to the citizenship question on the census.
Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd wrote a letter to House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings and told him to “hold the subpoenas in abeyance and delay any vote on whether to recommend a citation of contempt for noncompliance with subpoenas, pending the President’s determination of this question.”
The vote to hold Attorney General Bill Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt is scheduled for early Wednesday morning.
“After the Committee served the Attorney General with a subpoena on April 2, 2019 for much of the same material, the Department continued to engage in good-father efforts to satisfy the committee’s legislative needs,” Boyd said in the letter to Cummings. “To date, the Department has made eight document submissions totaling more than 17,000 pages. In addition, the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Department’s Civil Rights Division, John Gore, voluntarily appeared for a transcribed interview to answer the committee’s questions, as did Counselor to the Attorney General.”
Boyd threatened to assert executive privilege if the Dem-controlled committee votes to hold Barr and Ross in contempt.
“In the face of this threatened contempt vote, the Attorney General is now compelled to request that the President invoke executive privilege with respect to the materials subject to the subpoena to the Attorney General and the subpoena to the Secretary of the Department of Commerce.”
Liberals went berserk after Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross announced last year that the 2020 census will include a question on citizenship.
The liberals fear the citizenship question would cost Democrat strongholds electoral representation in Congress and federal aide and benefit Republican-leaning areas.
Of course the Democrats don’t want the citizenship question on the census because it gives illegal aliens representation in Congress — illegal aliens don’t even have to be given voting rights, as long as they are counted as citizens, they are given a US Representative who fights for their interests over the interests of taxpaying Americans — this is precisely why the Democrats are fighting like hell to stop the Trump admin from adding this question to the census.
The census is taken every 10 years and is used to allot seats to the US House of Representatives in addition to distributing almost $1 trillion in federal funds.
The Supreme Court will issue a final ruling on the citizenship census question any day now.
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