Tag: House Oversight Committee

House Democrats to continue census probe

Panel will resume query into why a citizenship query was added to next year’s census.

The House Oversight and Reform Committee will continue to investigate the addition of a citizenship query to next year’s census, Chairman Elijah E. Cummings said Thursday in the wake of the Supreme Court decision to block the question.

The investigation has been a hotspot of conflict between the House and the administration. The committee voted to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt over document subpoenas earlier this month. Cummings, D-Md., called on the pair to comply with the subpoenas.

“[I]t is now even more clear that our Committee’s investigation must get to the truth of why the Trump Administration was pushing the citizenship question and why it is engaging in this coverup,” Cummings said in a statement.

View the complete June 28 article by Michael Macagnone on The Roll Call website here.

House panel votes to subpoena Kellyanne Conway over Hatch Act testimony

The Hill logoThe House Oversight and Reform Committee on Wednesday voted to subpoena White House counselor Kellyanne Conway after she did not appear voluntarily at a hearing focused on her repeated alleged violations of the Hatch Act.

The committee voted 25-16 to compel Conway’s testimony following roughly 30 minutes of arguments over the validity of the Office of Special Counsel’s (OSC) findings that she repeatedly violated the law, which prohibits federal officials from weighing in on elections in their government capacity.

Rep. Justin Amash (Mich.) was the lone Republican to side with Democrats to authorize the subpoena.

View the complete June 26 article by Brett Samuels on The Hill website here.

House Oversight recommends contempt charge against Barr and Ross over citizenship question on census

AlterNet logoIn a morning press release, Democratic Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform Elijah Cummings announced that the committee has filed a bipartisan report recommending that both Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross be held in contempt of Congress. The contempt recommendation comes after both Barr and Ross refused to speak to Congress about the reason that a question on citizenship was added to the 2020 census form, and after other witnesses were blocked from discussing the issue.

Included with the recommendation is a transcript of the committee’s interview with former Ross adviser James Uthmeier. The transcript shows that officials at the Department of Commerce blocked Uthmeier from replying almost one hundred times. He didn’t answer questions about the advice he gave on the citizenship question. He wouldn’t answer when asked whom he had spoken to about the idea. He wouldn’t talk about a secret memo he wrote on the topic and hand-delivered to the Justice Department.

Even so, Cummings says it wasn’t completely useless to have the former adviser testify. “Despite these restrictions, Mr. Uthmeier provided the Committee with some new information,” wrote the committee chair. “He disclosed that he sought advice on adding the citizenship question from John Baker, an outspoken advocate who has argued that ‘the citizenship question is necessary to collect the data for a redistricting of House seats that excludes aliens from the calculation.’  Mr. Baker’s views on the citizenship question have nothing to do with enforcing the Voting Rights Act, but instead are focused on redistricting.”

View the complete Jun 25 article by Mark Sumner from Daily Kos not he AlterNet website here.

House Oversight votes to hold Barr, Ross in contempt

The House Oversight and Reform Committee voted largely along party lines on Wednesday to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt for failing to comply with congressional subpoenas.

Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) broke with his party to vote with the panel’s Democrats.

The high-stakes vote took place just hours after the Justice and Commerce departments announced that President Trump had asserted executive privilege over the subpoenaed documents, which were tied to the Trump administration’s addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

View the complete June 12 article by Jacqueline Thomsen on The Hill website here.

GOP’s Jim Jordan gets mocked at House Oversight hearing after ranting that Democrats are trying to interfere with the Supreme Court

On Wednesday, the House Oversight Committee held a hearing to decide whether to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt for not complying with subpoenas regarding the Committee’s investigation into the Trump Administration’s decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census.

Republicans tried to stunt the proceedings, but their efforts to do so were swiftly blocked.

“Democrats know the Supreme Court will rule by the end of this month on the citizenship question but they hope to use this committee’s oversight power to create a controversy around this issue, try to impact the Court’s decision,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) claimed.

View the complete June 12 article by Tana Geneva from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

House committee to vote on holding Barr and Ross in contempt for failing to provide documents related to 2020 Census citizenship question

The chairman of the House Oversight Committee said Monday that the panel would vote to hold Attorney General William P. Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt for failing to comply with a bipartisan subpoena for documents on a Trump administration plan to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

The panel’s chairman, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), announced the move in letters to Barr and Ross on Monday. He gave them until Thursday to comply and raised the possibility of delaying the vote if they cooperate.

“Unfortunately, your actions are part of a pattern,” Cummings wrote to Barr and Ross in the letters. “The Trump administration has been engaged in one of the most unprecedented coverups since Watergate, extending from the White House to multiple federal agencies and departments of the government and across numerous investigations.”

View the complete June 3 article by Felicia Sonmez Tara Bahrampour and Rachael Bade on The Washington Post website here.

Democrats threaten Trump officials’ salaries over White House nondisclosure agreements

House Democrats are probing whether the nondisclosure agreements that the Trump White House has made outgoing employees sign comply with whistleblower protection laws.

If they don’t, House Oversight and Reform Chairman Elijah Cummings warned, the salaries of administration officials who have enforced those NDAs could be withheld in accordance with federal law.

In a letter to acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, Cummings renewed a request from last year — when Democrats were in the minority — for the Trump administration to hand over copies of the NDAs signed by outgoing officials.

View the complete May 14 article by Griffin Connolly on The Roll Call website here.

House panel moves to hold former White House official in contempt after he obeys Trump administration’s instruction not to testify

The House Oversight Committee moved Tuesday to hold a former White House personnel security director in contempt of Congress for failing to appear at a hearing investigating alleged lapses in White House security clearance procedures.

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said he would consult with the House counsel and members of the panel about scheduling a vote on contempt for former White House personnel security director Carl Kline. At the instruction of the White House, Kline failed to show up for scheduled testimony on security clearances.

The move marks a dramatic escalation of tensions between Congress and the Trump White House, which is increasingly resisting requests for information from Capitol Hill.

“The White House and Mr. Kline now stand in open defiance of a duly authorized congressional subpoena with no assertion of any privilege of any kind by President Trump,” Cummings said in a statement. “Based on these actions, it appears that the President believes that the Constitution does not apply to his White House, that he may order officials at will to violate their legal obligations, and that he may obstruct attempts by Congress to conduct oversight.”

View the complete April 23 article by Tom Hamburger on The Washington Post website here.

Trump, businesses sue Oversight chairman to block subpoena for financial records

President Trump and his private business are suing House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) to try to block a subpoena requesting financial records from the president’s accountant.

The lawsuit, which was filed Monday, asks a federal court in Washington, D.C., to prevent Cummings from obtaining records from Mazars USA, an accounting firm used by the president and his businesses, arguing congressional Democrats are abusing their subpoena power.

“Democrats are using their new control of congressional committees to investigate every aspect of President Trump’s personal finances, businesses, and even his family,” the suit reads. “Instead of working with the president to pass bipartisan legislation that would actually benefit Americans, House Democrats are singularly obsessed with finding something they can use to damage the President politically.”

View the complete April 22 article by Jacqueline Thomsen and Jordan Fabian on The Hill website here.

House Oversight votes to subpoena ex-White House official in security clearance probe

The House Oversight and Reform Committee on Tuesday voted to authorize a subpoena for a former White House official to testify as part of the panel’s investigation into the Trump administration’s security clearance process.

The committee voted 22-15 along party lines to approve a resolution authorizing a subpoena for former White House Personnel Security Director Carl Kline to interview with the committee.

Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) telegraphed plans to subpoena Kline, who worked in the White House Personnel Security Office for the first two years of the Trump administration, in a letter to White House counsel Pat Cipollone on Monday.

View the complete April 2 article by Morgan Chalfant and Olivia Beavers on The Hill website here.