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White House Asserts Executive Privilege in Census Fight

Associated Press

   President Donald Trump has asserted executive privilege over documents
   that were subpoenaed by Congress related to the Trump administration's
   decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, the Justice
   Department said Wednesday.

   The claim comes as the House Oversight Committee considers whether to
   hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross
   in contempt for failing to turn over the subpoenaed documents. A
   contempt vote by the committee would be an escalation of Democratic
   efforts to use their House majority to aggressively investigate the
   inner workings of the Trump administration.

   In a letter to the committee's chairman, Rep. Rep. Elijah Cummings of
   Maryland, the Justice Department asserted that the administration has
   "engaged in good-faith efforts" to satisfy the committee's oversight
   needs and said the planned contempt vote was premature.

   Democrats fear the question will reduce census participation in
   immigrant-heavy communities. They say they want specific documents to
   determine why Ross added the citizenship question to the 2020 census
   and contend the Trump administration has declined to provide them
   despite repeated requests.

   The administration has turned over more than 17,000 of pages of
   documents and Ross testified for nearly seven hours. The Justice
   Department has said two senior officials also sat for interviews with
   committee staff members and it was working to produce tens of thousands
   of additional pages of relevant documents.

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