House committee to hold contempt votes for Barr, Ross

By Felicia Sonmez and Rachael Bade | Washington Post

WASHINGTON – The House Oversight Committee is preparing to vote on whether to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt for not providing documents related to the addition of a question on citizenship to the 2020 Census.

The panel’s chairman, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., announced the move in letters to Barr and Ross on Monday.

“This step will initiate the process of bringing a civil enforcement action to obtain compliance with the Committee’s subpoenas,” Cummings said in the letters.

In a 23-14 vote in April, the committee authorized Cummings to issue subpoenas for a deposition of John Gore, principal deputy assistant attorney general, and to Barr and Ross for documents related to the 2020 Census decision.

In his Monday letter to Barr, Cummings cited the attorney general’s “unprecedented order” to Gore to defy the subpoena as part of the reason for the move.

Last week, new evidence emerged suggesting that the citizenship question was crafted specifically to give an electoral advantage to Republicans and whites. The Supreme Court is expected to rule on whether the Trump administration can add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census.

The Washington Post’s Tara Bahrampour contributed to this report.