Barr, Ross are held in criminal contempt
House vote along party lines relates to Census question
WASHINGTON — The House on Wednesday voted to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in criminal contempt for not providing documents related to the Trump administration’s efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, escalating the fight between Democrats and the White House over congressional oversight.
The 230-to-198 vote along party lines came one day after the House approved a resolution condemning President Donald Trump’s racist remarks aimed at four minority congresswomen.
After a string of legal defeats, Trump last week abruptly retreated from his efforts to add the question to the census, announcing he will instead order federal agencies to provide the Commerce Department with records on the numbers of citizens and noncitizens in the country.
But lawmakers continue to demand answers about the motivations behind the administration’s 19-month effort to ask about citizenship status on the decennial survey. In May, new evidence emerged suggesting the question was crafted specifically to give an electoral advantage to Republicans and whites. The Trump administration has said it needs the information to better enforce the Voting Rights Act.
Barr and Ross wrote to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., earlier Wednesday, saying they “strongly oppose” the resolution and asked her to postpone the vote so they could continue working through a legally mandated process toward a compromise.
“By taking this action, the House is both unnecessarily undermining inter-branch comity and degrading the constitutional separation of powers and its own institutional integrity,” the two Cabinet members wrote.
In a statement, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham called the vote “ridiculous” and said it was “yet another lawless attempt to harass the president and his administration.”
The impact of the contempt vote is largely symbolic. Those found in criminal contempt are normally referred to the Justice Department for prosecution; in this instance, the Justice Department would not prosecute itself.
During Wednesday’s floor debate, Republicans cast Democrats’ holding of the vote as merely a political show.
“We may be in July, but it’s Groundhog Day all over again,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said.
Pointing to the contempt vote, a Democratic resolution on impeachment and Tuesday’s resolution condemning Trump’s racist remarks aimed at four minority Democratic congresswomen, McCarthy said Democrats are consumed with passing measures “attacking Trump” while voters are more concerned with kitchen-table issues.
Wednesday’s vote is the latest attempt by House Democrats to force the administration to submit to congressional oversight. Last month, the House voted to seek court enforcement of subpoenas for Barr and former White House counsel Donald McGahn.
A move by the House to hold a sitting attorney general in contempt of Congress is rare but not unprecedented: In 2012, the Republican-led House voted to hold then-Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt over declination to provide material in the probe of Operation Fast and Furious, a federal government program targeting gun trafficking by Mexican cartels.