House Oversight Committee to vote on whether to hold Barr, Ross in contempt over census subpoenas

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published 3 June 2019

It's like déjà-vu.

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 adhering to the committee's subpoenas for documents related to the addition of a controversial citizenship question on the 2020 Census, committee Chair Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) announced in letters to Barr and Ross on Monday.

Cummings zeroed in Barr's "unprecedented order" to John Gore, a top official in the Justice Department's Civil Rights division, to defy a subpoena after the committee also requested he appear before them to give testimony.

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This is becoming old hat for Barr, though, who faced a similar scenario in May when the House Judiciary Committee voted to hold him in contempt for not showing up to his scheduled testimony on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into 2016 Russian election interference.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule on whether the Trump administration can add the citizenship question to the census.

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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.