House Democrats voted Wednesday to hold Attorney General Bill Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in criminal contempt for refusing to hand over privileged documents related to the Trump administration’s efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.
Political stunt
However, Republicans are calling the move “a PR stunt” and “a new low” for Democrats who are merely intent on firing up their base and slandering the administration. It remains highly unlikely that Barr or Ross will face criminal charges from the legislative action, since a U.S. Attorney from Barr’s own Justice Department would have to make the decision to indict.
“Today’s PR stunt further demonstrates their unending quest to generate headlines instead of operating in good faith with our Department,” said Ross. “Preferring to play political games rather than help lead the country, they have made every attempt to ascribe evil motivations to everyday functions of government.”
House Democrats are currently seeking answers to explain why the White House sought to add the citizenship question to the 2020 census. The Supreme Court previously ruled that the DOJ’s premise for asking the citizenship question — to aid in the enforcement of the Voting Rights Act — was built upon a false pretext.
Although the high court rejected the administration’s justification for the question, the justices left open the option for the DOJ to include it, so long as there was a valid reason. Initially, Trump appeared ready to press the issue, but he has since decided to drop the question from the census in favor of relying on various federal agencies to compile citizenship data.
Asserting privilege
Nevertheless, Democrats are still determined to force Barr and Ross to hand over approximately 15 pages of records — documents over which Trump has asserted executive privilege.
“Oh, this is just more political theater,” Ross told Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo on Wednesday. “It doesn’t really have any substantive basis. We produced to the committee more than 14,000 pages of documents. What’s at issue here is about a dozen documents, roughly 15 pages, all of which the courts didn’t find necessary to make their conclusion.”
“We are not stonewalling, but we are also not yielding on the very, very important matter of executive privilege,” Ross added. “These are privileged documents. They are going to remain privileged documents and we are not going to be frightened into changing that position just because of some action the house might take.”
Democrats claim that they are opposed to asking citizenship questions of U.S. residents because they believe it will discourage non-citizens from participating in the decennial survey. Census population data is used to establish federal funding, district boundaries, Electoral College votes and congressional seats.
“Democrats are engaged in yet another episode of political theater in an attempt to delegitimize the citizenship question,” argued Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan following the contempt vote. “The Democrats’ misuse of their contempt authority today raises the question: why don’t they want to know how many American citizens are in this country?”
The answer is clear: by settling illegal immigrants in Democrat strongholds across the country, blue states stand to gain greater congressional representation. Meanwhile, Midwestern and Rustbelt states will lose representatives, since Congress is fixed at 435 members.
Scoring political points
Although the White House has abandoned its efforts to reform the census, House Democrats aren’t ready to move on just yet. The lower chamber voted 230-198 to hold Barr and Ross in contempt. Just four Democrats joined Republicans in opposing the measure.
“Since the Committee issued bipartisan subpoenas on April 2, 2019, the Departments of Justice and Commerce have refused to produce key unredacted documents,” House Oversight Committee chairman Elijah Cummings (D) said. “The Administration originally claimed that it would not produce documents while the Supreme Court was considering this case—a baseless argument that was rejected by the Committee.”
If Cummings and his liberal colleagues were really serious about going after the administration, they would have filed civil contempt charges. Doing so would have brought the matter before a federal judge, however, allowing Barr and Ross to defend themselves with the executive privilege claim.
And Democrats don’t want that. They would much rather use hit-and-run tactics than fight in the trenches, attacking the administration over a settled issue, just to score political points.
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