House votes to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt The House of Representatives voted to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in criminal contempt of Congress on Wednesday, delivering an unusual rebuke to two of the government's top officials and stiffening the capital's partisan divide.
Lawmakers, by a vote of 230 to 198, said Barr and Ross had defied subpoenas seeking information about the failed attempt by President Donald Trump's administration to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, the once-a-decade survey that helps divvy up political power and billions of dollars in government spending.
Wednesday's vote was the first time since 2012 that the full House has held a sitting attorney general in contempt and asked that he be prosecuted, and the first time the chamber had held a commerce secretary in contempt.
The vote, led by the House's Democratic majority, came one day after the House staged an acrimonious vote to condemn President Donald Trump's Twitter attacks against four Democratic congresswomen of color as racist. Another measure of the toxic political environment was on display before the contempt action when members blocked a proposal to impeach Trump.
White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham called the rebukes of the two Cabinet members “ridiculous and yet another lawless attempt to harass the president and his administration.â€
In a joint letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Barr and Ross urged a postponement of the vote, calling it "unreasonable, counterproductive and contrary" to the normal workings of congressional oversight.
"By taking this action, the House is both unnecessarily undermining inter-branch comity and degrading the constitutional separation of powers and its own institutional integrity," Barr and Ross wrote just before the vote. "We strongly disagree with any suggestion that our departments have obstructed this investigation."
Barr already has been cited for contempt by both the House Judiciary and Oversight committees for failing to produce information about both the census and special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian election interference.
The criminal contempt citations, which are are punishable by a year in jail and up to $100,000 in fines, are unlikely to result in prosecution as Barr oversees the Justice Department, which would be in charge of bringing a case.............
https://www.yahoo.com/news/house-votes-hold-attorney-general-222822687.html
