Former Deputy Independent Counsel Sol Wisenberg says House Democrats’ push for Attorney General William Barr to be charged with criminal contempt is a purely political move.
The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives on Wednesday voted to hold Attorney General Bill Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in criminal contempt, saying they were stonewalling congressional probes into the Trump administration’s efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.
The vote was 230-198, with 4 Democrats and all Republicans voting no. Michigan Rep. Justin Amash, now an independent after leaving the Republican Party, voted yes.
Ross, meanwhile, told Fox News earlier in the day that the planned move was mere “political theater.” The vote came one day after a chaotic floor fight all but derailed Democrats’ resolution to present a unified front and condemn President Trump’s “racist” remarks over the weekend.
“Democrats are engaged in yet another episode of political theater in an attempt to delegitimize the citizenship question,” Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement after the vote.
“The Administration is complying with the Democrats’ investigation. Asking about citizenship is neither new nor controversial,” Jordan added. “Today’s vote shows that Democrats in Congress will stop at nothing to attack the President and his Administration. 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?”
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It remained highly unlikely that Barr and Ross will face charges, as those would have to be pursued by the Trump administration’s Justice Department, which Barr heads. When Holder was ultimately held in contempt in 2012, his Justice Department under President Barack Obama did not pursue charges either.
President Donald Trump is joined by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Attorney General William Barr, right, as he speaks in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, Thursday, July 11, 2019. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Still, debate over the contempt resolution during the day was contentious. In one spirited moment, Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., cited House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings’ own words from 2012, when House Republicans were seeking to hold then-Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt over the botched Obama-sanctioned gunrunning sting operation known as “Fast and Furious.”
“‘Holding someone in contempt of Congress is one of the most serious and formal actions our committee can take,” Meadows began. “It should not be used as a political tool to generate press as part of an election-year witch hunt. Now, who is responsible for that quote? It’s not Jordan, it’s not Cheney, It’s Chairman Elijah Cummings!”
For his part, Cummings, D-Md., said the criminal contempt resolution “is about protecting democracy” and “protecting the integrity of this body.”
“It’s bigger than the census,” Cummings declared. “I do not come to this floor lightly.”
Sparks also flew on Tuesday, when the House played host to a historic floor fight before finally passing a resolution condemning President Trump for making “racist” comments. The spat saw House Speaker Nancy Pelosi being ruled out of order and briefly losing her speaking privileges, as well as something of a “gavel-drop” moment when the presiding chair abandoned his post in frustration.
“Oh, this is just more political theater,” Ross told Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo Wednesday morning. “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.”
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In a letter to Pelosi on Wednesday, Barr and Ross slammed the House panel’s decision to “recommend the House wield its criminal contempt authority even though we reamin willing to work towards an appropriate accomodation notwithstanding the privileged status of the documents at issue and the active litigation that remains pending in this matter.”
“We urge that the House postpone the contempt vote in order to allow the constitutionally mandated accomodation process to continue,” Barr and Ross wrote. ” And we respectfully remind the Committee that the constitutionally required obligation to engage in good-faith accomodation cuts both ways.”
Democrats could have opted to go down the road of civil contempt, but that would have meant bringing the matter before a court. Barr and Ross would then be able to raise the defense that they did not provide the requested materials because President Trump had asserted executive privilege over them.
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“We are not stonewalling, but we are also not yielding on the very, very important matter of executive privilege,” Ross told Bartiromo. “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.”
House Democrats have been trying to get records that would explain why the administration has been trying to include the citizenship question. Ross claimed that the Department of Justice pushed for it to aid enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, but the Supreme Court found this was just a pretext.
Democrats opposed the citizenship question out of concern that it would discourage immigrants from responding to the census, skewing population numbers that could affect federal funding and congressional representation in areas with high immigrant populations.
The high court’s ruling said that a citizenship question could be permitted in theory, but there had to be a valid reason for it. Democrats have come out against the citizenship question, claiming that it would discourage people from responding to the census, affecting the amount of federal funding and the drawing of district maps in areas with large immigrant populations.
The Trump administration appeared to go back and forth on how to proceed following the Supreme Court’s ruling. At first, Ross’ Commerce Department said they were moving forward with printing the census questionnaires without the question, only for President Trump to then tweet that he was not giving up the fight to include it.
Eventually, Trump announced that the administration would not include the citizenship question on the census, but ordered the Commerce Department to compile citizenship information from various federal databases.
Separately, the House voted to disapprove of the administration going around Congress and selling arms to Saudi Arabia. The move will likely set up another veto fight with the president.
“Today, the House voted to disapprove of the Trump Administration’s ill-conceived decision to allow the sale of sensitive military equipment and munitions to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which continue to prosecute a war in Yemen whose main outcome has been an unmitigated humanitarian disaster and military stalemate,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said in a statement.
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“Using force to pressure the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who have committed terrible atrocities and are responsible for horrible civilian suffering, into accepting coalition demands has demonstrably not worked,” Hoyer continued. “I am encouraged by reports the UAE is now reassessing its role in this conflict; we ought to be doing the same.”
In addition, the House voted to effectively kill impeachment articles drafted by Rep. Al Green, D-Texas., who has long pushed for Trump to be removed from office. Green has said Trump’s comments this weekend directed at four female progressive lawmakers are disqualifying.
The vote to table the articles of impeachment succeeded 332-95. Every Republican voted to table the bill, and 137 Democrats joined them. Michigan Rep. Justin Amash, now an independent, voted yes, and Oregon Democrat Rep. Peter DeFazio voted present.
The vote was not a straight up-or-down vote on whether to impeach Trump. Rather, it was a procedural move to euthanize Green’s articles.
However, the vote did formally take the temperature of the Democrat caucus on the matter for the first time since Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report was released, just days after Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., called for Trump’s impeachment in a fiery press conference.
Omar even charged that there was “credible evidence” Trump had colluded illegally with Russians, despite Mueller’s contrary findings after a lengthy probe.
Democrats, including Pelosi, have long warned that there is not enough substantive justification for impeachment. And the issue is a hot one for swing-state Democrats who risk alienating moderates.
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The House previously voted to table Green’s articles of impeachment in December 2017 by a vote of 238-126, with four members voting present.
In January 2018, the articles were tabled by a vote of 234-121 with three Democrats voting present.
Fox News’ Ronn Blitzer and Chad Pergram contributed to this report.
