The Democratic-led House Oversight Committee is suing Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to enforce a subpoena in its battle to obtain documents related to the 2020 census.
“I am filing this enforcement action today because the Trump administration’s brazen obstruction of Congress must not stand. President Trump and his aides are not above the law. They cannot be allowed to disregard and degrade the authority of Congress to fulfill our core constitutional legislative and oversight responsibilities,” Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney said in a statement.
The committee is seeking documents related to the Trump administration’s efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. Democrats believe the administration’s reason for adding a citizenship question was politically motivated.
A Supreme Court ruling in June barred the Trump administration from adding the question until it does a better job of explaining why it is necessary.
The House voted in July to hold Barr and Ross in criminal contempt for not turning over the subpoenaed materials.
A Commerce Department spokesperson knocked the lawsuit as lacking merit.
“The Department made over 2,000 documents available to the committee, and submitted hundreds of pages of additional documents since the Supreme Court’s decision. At the same time, the department allowed current and former officials to sit with representatives of the committee for transcribed interviews, while the secretary himself testified voluntarily in front of the full Committee for seven hours. Together, they answered well over a thousand questions,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
Democrats sued the Trump officials a day after a federal judge ruled former White House counsel Don McGahn must testify in response to a subpoena in the House impeachment investigation. The White House tried to argue its aides were immune from such subpoenas.
