Elijah E Cummings

The House Oversight and Reform Committee voted Wednesday to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt of Congress as Democrats argued the pair defied subpoenas in a probe of the addition of the citizenship question to the 2020 census.

The 24-15 vote followed the Justice Department earlier asserting executive privilege to withhold documents sought by the committee. Democrats claim the question would suppress noncitizen participation and would be used to draw Republican-favored maps. The administration says it is needed to enforce the Voting Rights Act.

The Justice Department on Wednesday asserted executive privilege over documents tied to the probe into the addition of the citizenship question to the 2020 census, as the House Oversight and Reform Committee neared a vote to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt.

Chairman Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, D-Maryland, said he would hold the vote on contempt later in the day to allow members of the panel time to read the administration's responses. Democrats claim the question would suppress noncitizen participation and be used to draw Republican-favored maps, despite the administration’s argument that it is needed to enforce the Voting Rights Act.

The House Oversight and Reform Committee plans to vote next week on holding Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt after they missed a subpoena deadline to produce documents the panel was seeking as it investigates why a question about citizenship was added to the 2020 census, Chairman Elijah E. Cummings said Friday.

The Maryland Democrat, in a statement, called the two departments’ reasons for not producing documents by Thursday “case studies in double-speak,” and said the administration has consistently resisted the panel's probe into the addition of the question to next year's census.

The Justice Department on Thursday rejected document demands from the chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee related to the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 census, which could lead to votes to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt of Congress.

In a letter from Assistant Attorney General Stephen E. Boyd, the department argued that some of the documents sought by the panel, such as letters between the DOJ and Census Bureau, are protected. The deadline to submit the documents, which are being sought under a subpoena, was Thursday.

The House Oversight and Reform Committee canceled planned subpoena votes for three current and former Commerce Department officials Wednesday in its census citizenship question inquiry after the trio agreed to closed-door interviews.

Chairman Elijah E. Cummings, D-Md., characterized the agreement for transcribed interviews of General Counsel Peter Davidson, Deputy Chief of Staff and Director of Policy Earl Comstock, and former counsel to the Commerce Secretary James Uthmeier, as one step forward for the probe.

Both Democrats and Republicans on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform grilled leaders of the FBI and Transportation Security Administration on Tuesday about how their use of facial recognition software conflicts with transparency and privacy laws.

“This technology is evolving extremely rapidly without any real guard rails,” Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings warned in his opening statement at Tuesday’s hearing, the panel’s second in less than a month on facial recognition. “Whether we are talking about commercial use or government use, there are real concerns about the risks that this technology poses to our civil rights and liberties and our right to privacy.”

Updated 8:38 p.m. | The House will vote June 11 to hold Attorney General William Barr and former White House counsel Don McGahn in contempt of Congress, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer announced Monday.

The planned floor action follows a party-line vote in the Judiciary Committee last month on a contempt citation against Barr. The panel’s action came after the attorney general ignored its subpoena for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s full, unredacted report and underlying investigatory materials.

House Oversight and Reform Democrats threatened to vote on holding Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt of Congress, accusing the pair Monday of rebuffing investigations into the addition of the citizenship question to the 2020 census.

Chairman Elijah E. Cummings, D-Md., accused the administration of “one of the most unprecedented cover-ups since Watergate,” in a letter Monday to Barr and another to Ross. He gave them until Thursday to answer several subpoenas issued earlier this year.

Democrats on the House Oversight and Reform Committee charged Thursday that new documents cited by an advocacy group show that President Donald Trump added a citizenship question to the 2020 census primarily to give Republicans the upper hand in the next round of congressional redistricting.

The documents, which allegedly show that a Republican strategist pushed the administration to include the question for partisan gain, were revealed amid months of conflict between the committee and the administration that culminated recently in the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division defying a subpoena. They also emerged as the Supreme Court nears a decision on a challenge to the citizenship question.

In 2016, police officers in Baltimore used new technology to scan the faces of protesters who filled the city’s streets following the death in custody of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man. Among those whose most recognizable features may have been documented was Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, the Democratic chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee.

Three years later, Cummings is still angry such surveillance was conducted without a warrant or reason to believe that he — or any other protester, for that matter — had done anything illegal. Now he’s putting the full weight of his committee’s jurisdiction behind a push to ban facial recognition technology until Congress can pass comprehensive legislation to govern its use.