Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross testified before Congress that his Commerce Department added a citizenship question to the 2020 census in response to a request from the Justice Department, but it looks like he was lying.
Lawsuits filed by cities and states against the citizenship question have revealed Ross himself explicitly asked for the citizenship question.
I mean, his emails literally say he requested it.
"I am mystified why nothing [has] been done in response to my months old request that we include the citizenship question. Why not?" he wrote in a May 2017 email to two Commerce Department officials. [...]
Ross, who oversees the census, approved adding the new citizenship question in late March, after testifying during a House Ways and Means Committee hearing that the Justice Department "initiated the request" for the question in a December 2017 letter to the Census Bureau. Ross says the Justice Department needs responses to the question to better enforce the Voting Rights Act's provisions against racial discrimination.
But earlier this month, a federal judge in New York City said internal documents the administration previously filed in court as part of the lawsuits suggest Ross' statements "were potentially untrue."
"Potentially untrue."
Yeah.
Wilbur Ross is very familiar with lying to Congress. His financial disclosure forms conveniently left out the fact that he retained stakes in companies that could benefit from his decisions. Ross only just recently divested in full more than a year after he was confirmed by the Senate.