The Department of Justice has declined to prosecute Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on Wednesday after the House voted last week to hold them in criminal contempt.
The decision comes after Barr and Ross refused to submit documents requested by congressional subpoenas related to the Trump administration’s attempts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. The House then voted 230-198 to hold both Cabinet officials in contempt of Congress.
“The Department of Justice’s long-standing position is that we will not prosecute an official for contempt of Congress for declining to provide information subject to a presidential assertion of executive privilege,” Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen wrote in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday.
Rosen said the pair’s decision to not comply with the subpoenas “did not constitute a crime.” The DOJ had not been expected to prosecute either Barr or Ross for contempt.
The House Oversight and Reform Committee issued the subpoenas to the Justice and Commerce departments in April seeking information about why the president wanted to add the citizenship question to the census. When both Cabinet officials declined to respond to the subpoenas, Trump asserted executive privilege and ordered Barr and Ross not to hand over documents related to the investigation.
Rosen cited prior Justice Department cases to justify his decision not to prosecute the Cabinet officials, including investigations into both the Bush and Obama administrations.
“[A]ccordingly the department will not bring the congressional contempt citations before a grand jury or take any other action to prosecute the attorney general or the secretary,” Rosen said.
Trump has been accused by opponents of the citizenship question of attempting to deter both legal and undocumented immigrants from engaging in the census. The Supreme Court ended up blocking the Trump administration from adding the question to the census last month.
