It's Almost Contempt Vote Time Again!
House Oversight Committee chairman Rep. Elijah Cummings has set a time on Wednesday for his committee to vote on whether to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with House subpoena, according to The Hill.
“Both Secretary Ross and Attorney General Barr are refusing to comply with duly authorized subpoenas from Congress. Because they are in contempt of Congress, on Wednesday, the Committee will vote to move forward to enforce our bipartisan subpoenas,” Cummings said in a statement.
“I continue to hope that they will change course and begin producing the information we need to do our job under the Constitution,” he added.
Cummings has been warning Barr and Ross about this vote for awhile now. It follows a previous vote last month which in which the committee held Barr in contempt for refusing to provide Congress with the full report on Russian meddling in the 2016 election by special counsel Robert Mueller. That vote has still not gone to the House floor.
The vote scheduled for Wednesday regards a subpoena for documents involving the inclusion of a question about citizenship on the 2020 census, which many say would increase Republican power by discouraging immigrants from participating. The addition of the question is currently being debated by the Supreme Court.
Earlier today, the House Rules Committee held a hearing on Barr’s refusal to allow former White House lawyer Don McGhan to testify in front of Congress. Now, Rep. Jerry Nadler says the Department of Justice has agreed to turn over more evidence from Mueller on the president’s possible obstruction of justice.
A vote scheduled for tomorrow, which would have allowed the House to go to court to force Barr to hand over the documents, will still go forward. Nadler, for his part, agreed to not hold Barr in contempt for now for his previous refusal to comply with the subpoena.
Maybe Cummings will also manage to make a deal with the DOJ before the contempt vote goes forward Wednesday. Maybe not! Only time will tell.