House Oversight Sues Barr, Ross

Case 1:19-cv-03557 Document 1 Filed 11/26/19 Page 1 of 85
IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM,

UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
2157 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515,
Plaintiff,
v.
WILLIAM P. BARR, in his official capacity as

Attorney General of the United States,
United States Department of Justice Case No. _________
950 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, D.C. 20530, and
WILBUR L. ROSS, JR., in his official capacity as

Secretary of Commerce,
United States Department of Commerce
1401 Constitution Avenue NW
Washington, D.C. 20230,
Defendants.
COMPLAINT FOR DECLARATORY AND INJUNCTIVE RELIEF
Plaintiff Committee on Oversight and Reform (“Committee”) of the United States House
of Representatives (“House”) brings this civil action against Defendants William P. Barr,
Attorney General of the United States, and Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Secretary of Commerce. This
lawsuit arises out of Attorney General Barr’s and Secretary Ross’s unlawful refusals to comply
with duly authorized, issued, and served Committee subpoenas.
INTRODUCTION
1. The decennial census is a cornerstone of our democracy. Article I of the
Constitution requires the Federal Government to conduct a census every ten years, “in such
Manner as [Congress] shall by Law direct,” and Article I and the Fourteenth Amendment require
the census to count every person in the United States.1 The census provides the basis for
apportioning seats in Congress and for distributing more than $1.5 trillion in federal funds for
about 316 federal spending programs.2 These funds support vital healthcare, nutrition,
education, infrastructure, housing, and other programs on which many Americans rely.3 The
accuracy of the census is important to every American.
2. On March 26, 2018, Secretary Ross announced that the upcoming 2020 Decennial
Census (the “2020 Census” or the “Census”), unlike every previous census for the past 70 years,
would require everyone in America to answer a question on citizenship status.4 To support that
departure, Secretary Ross pointed to a single justification: The Department of Justice (“DOJ”),
he said, had requested the inclusion of a citizenship question on the Census to gather data
necessary to enforce the Voting Rights Act (“VRA”).5 Indeed, Secretary Ross testified to
Congress that he had decided to add the question “solely” in response to a December 12, 2017,
request from DOJ, which, he said, had “initiated” the process.6
1
U.S. Const. Art. 1, § 2, cl. 3; see U.S. Const. Amend. XIV, § 2.
2
Andrew Reamer, Research Professor, George Washington Univ., “Counting for Dollars
2020: The Role of the Decennial Census in the Geographic Distribution of Federal Funds,”
Report of the George Washington University Institute of Public Policy (Nov. 2019),
https://perma.cc/48YZ-9WXT.
3
Marisa Hotchkiss & Jessica Phelan, U.S. Census Bureau, Uses of Census Bureau Data
in Federal Funds Distribution, 3 (2017), https://perma.cc/D8PN-3RBS.
4
Memorandum from Secretary Wilbur L. Ross, Dep’t of Com., to Karen Dunn Kelley,
Under Secretary for Econ. Affairs, Dep’t of Com., Reinstatement of a Citizenship Question on
the 2020 Decennial Census Questionnaire, 2, 8 (Mar. 26, 2018), https://perma.cc/2XDF-Q7E8,
appended as Exhibit A.
5
Id. at 1–2.
6
Hearing with Commerce Secretary Ross Before the H. Comm. on Ways and Means,
115th Cong. 14–15, 51 (Mar. 22, 2018), https://perma.cc/Y3H3-F8MA, excerpt appended as
Exhibit B; Hearing Before the H. Appropriations Subcomm. on Com., Justice, Science, &
2
3. But those explanations—and Secretary Ross’s similar statements to Congress, the
public, and ultimately to the courts—were not true. As the Supreme Court concluded in June
2019, the VRA justification that Secretary Ross proffered was pretextual and “contrived”—made
up after the fact to conceal the actual basis for the decision.7 In truth, the Supreme Court found,
it was Secretary Ross himself, acting in concert with other Trump Administration officials, who
“was determined to reinstate a citizenship question from the time he entered office; instructed his
staff to make it happen; waited while Commerce Department officials explored whether another
agency would request census-based citizenship data; subsequently contacted the Attorney
General himself to ask if DOJ would make the request; and adopted the Voting Rights Act
rationale late in the process.”8
4. The Committee is investigating the attempt to add a citizenship question to the
2020 Census, both to conduct oversight of the Executive Branch and to determine whether
legislation may be necessary to amend the census process or to provide additional safeguards in
light of Defendants’ conduct.9 In particular, the Committee must understand the extent of
Related Agencies: FY19 Budget – Department of Commerce, 115th Cong. (Mar. 20, 2018),
webcast available at https://tinyurl.com/rnzty5f; excerpt appended as Exhibit C.
7
Dep’t of Com. v. New York, 139 S. Ct. 2551, 2573–76 (2019).
8
Id. at 2574.
9
Several members of the Committee began taking investigative steps in the previous
Congress. On March 27, 2018, the day after Secretary Ross announced the addition of the
citizenship question, then-Ranking Member Cummings expressed concern that the “new,
untested question on citizenship will increase costs for American taxpayers and decrease the
accuracy of the census,” as well as concern about “troubling examples of politicization at the
Census Bureau.” Press Release, Cummings Issues Statement Calling for Hearings on Trump
Administration Plan to Add Citizenship Question to Census, Comm. on Oversight and Gov’t
Reform (Mar. 27, 2018), https://perma.cc/P8YS-L9Q3, appended as Exhibit D. The following
week, on April 4, 2018, Mr. Cummings wrote to Secretary Ross and the Acting Director of the
Census Bureau on behalf of six Committee members. His letter asked the Department to
produce several categories of documents, a subset of which the Committee later subpoenaed
from Secretary Ross in the current Congress. Letter from Elijah E. Cummings, Ranking
3
maladministration by government officials and the scope and nature of procedural defects
relating to the Census, including with respect to the Commerce Department’s process for
soliciting and evaluating input regarding the citizenship question, the Commerce Department’s
efforts to affect the accuracy of the enumeration, and improper political influences on the
Census.10 This information is critical to the Committee’s oversight and legislative interests in
furthering an accurate Enumeration.11 Without the information, the Committee cannot fulfill its
constitutional duties to oversee DOJ and the Commerce Department and to remedy through
legislation any defects in the administration of the Census—tasks that are at the foundation of
American democracy.
5. The Committee’s investigation has already revealed much about the true origins
of the effort to include the citizenship question. Evidence shows that members of the Trump
Administration were seeking to add a citizenship question long before DOJ sent its December
2017 letter. Members of President Trump’s campaign and transition team discussed the issue
Member, Comm. on Oversight and Gov’t Reform, et al., to Secretary Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Dep’t
of Com. & Dr. Ron Jarmin, Acting Director, Census Bureau (Apr. 4, 2018),
https://perma.cc/2YTF-3JPL, appended as Exhibit E. Representatives Carolyn Maloney, Elijah
Cummings and others sent a similar document request to DOJ on May 1, 2018. Letter from
Carolyn B. Maloney, Member, Comm. on Oversight and Gov’t Reform, et al., to John M. Gore,
Acting Assistant Att’y Gen., Dep’t of Justice (May 1, 2018), https://perma.cc/383J-JL5V,
appended as Exhibit F. As detailed in this Complaint, the Committee narrowed the scope of its
subsequent document requests and subpoenas as an accommodation to Defendants.
10
See Memorandum from Carolyn B. Maloney, Acting Chairwoman, Comm. on
Oversight and Reform, to Members, Comm. on Oversight and Reform, Re: Update on
Investigation of Census Citizenship Question Since House Held Attorney General Barr and
Commerce Secretary Ross in Contempt of Congress, 8–9, 14–15 (Nov. 12, 2019),
https://perma.cc/88XZ-YNAJ, appended as Exhibit G.
11
See id. at 9.
4
before President Trump took office.12 After his inauguration, the President and his top
advisors—including then-Chief Strategist Steve Bannon and then-Chief of Staff Reince
Priebus—met in the White House to discuss the citizenship question.13 Secretary Ross spoke
personally with Mr. Bannon about the issue, and shortly after taking office, Secretary Ross
directed personnel within the Commerce Department to ensure that the citizenship question
would be added. Secretary Ross’s staff responded by prodding other agencies to request
inclusion of the question and thereby provide cover for Ross’s decision.14 After both the
Department of Homeland Security and DOJ declined those entreaties, Secretary Ross personally
contacted Attorney General Jeff Sessions to request again that DOJ assist. Only then did DOJ
draft its request letter—with input from Secretary Ross’s staff and a member of the Trump
Transition Team.15
6. There is much, however, that the Committee has been unable to learn because the
Defendants have defied the Committee’s duly authorized subpoenas (“Barr Subpoena” and
“Ross Subpoena,” together “Subpoenas”) for critical evidence. That evidence includes 11
unredacted documents concerning key developments in the process of adding the citizenship
question; unredacted drafts of DOJ’s formal written request letter; and unredacted
communications between the Commerce Department, DOJ, and other entities regarding the
12
Transcript, Tel. Interview with Kris Kobach, Comm. on Oversight and Reform, 11
(June 3, 2019), https://perma.cc/3CNN-4FQA; Transcript, Interview with Gene P. Hamilton,
Comm. on Oversight and Reform, 17–19 (May 30, 2019), https://perma.cc/WB2Y-9EMU.
13
See Transcript, Tel. Interview with Kris Kobach, Comm. on Oversight and Reform,
23–26 (June 3, 2019), https://perma.cc/3CNN-4FQA.
14
See Email from Earl Comstock, Director, Off. of Pol’y and Strategic Plan., to Secretary
Wilbur L. Ross, Jr. & Ellen Herbst, Chief Financial Officer, Dep’t of Com. (May 2, 2017, 2:19
PM), appended as Exhibit H; Transcript, Interview with Gene P. Hamilton, Comm. on
Oversight and Reform, 16 (May 30, 2019), https://perma.cc/WB2Y-9EMU.
15
Transcript, Interview with John M. Gore, Comm. on Oversight and Reform, 166 (Mar.
7, 2019), https://perma.cc/BXT5-KF8C.
5
addition of the question prior to DOJ’s formal written request. As the Committee has previously
explained, these documents “go to the heart” of the Committee’s legislative, investigative, and
oversight interests: “[T]hey reflect the reasons and process for developing the citizenship
question, the coordination between the Commerce Department and DOJ to create the pretextual
rationale, and the involvement of internal and outside parties” in those events and in the conduct
of the Census more generally.16
7. Despite the Committee’s extensive efforts at accommodations, Secretary Ross and
Attorney General Barr have refused to provide these critical documents and communications.
The Committee’s accommodation efforts included identifying a subset of priority documents for
production, but the Defendants produced documents that are redacted, already in the public
domain, not responsive, and/or missing attachments. In addition, Attorney General Barr
personally directed a key DOJ witness—the principal author of DOJ’s letter—to defy a
Congressional subpoena unless the Committee abandoned its longstanding and constitutionally
based deposition rules.17 Ultimately, at the direction of the President, both Defendants invoked a
“protective” and indiscriminate assertion of Executive Privilege over all remaining responsive
documents, ceasing any and all productions in response to the Subpoenas.18
16
Commerce Secretary Ross in Contempt of Congress, 2–3 (Nov. 12, 2019) (internal quotation
marks omitted), https://perma.cc/88XZ-YNAJ, appended as Exhibit G.
17
See, e.g., Letter from Stephen E. Boyd, Assistant Att’y Gen., Dep’t of Justice, to
Chairman Elijah E. Cummings, Comm. on Oversight and Reform, 3 (Apr. 9, 2019),
https://perma.cc/3AKZ-2EAY, appended as Exhibit I; Letter from Stephen E. Boyd, Assistant
Att’y Gen., Dep’t of Justice, to Chairman Elijah E. Cummings, Comm. on Oversight and Reform
(June 6, 2019), https://perma.cc/Q5HG-2R5A, appended as Exhibit J.
18
Letter from Stephen E. Boyd, Assistant Att’y Gen., Dep’t of Justice, to Chairman
Elijah E. Cummings, Comm. on Oversight and Reform (June 12, 2019), https://perma.cc/K73K-
H82P, appended as Exhibit K; Letter from Attorney General William P. Barr, Dep’t of Justice,
6
8. In light of Defendants’ withholding of responsive information from the
Committee, on July 17, 2019, the House voted to hold the Defendants in contempt of Congress.19
Defendants have since continued to refuse to produce any additional documents in response to
the Subpoenas,20 and the parties are therefore at an impasse.
9. Defendants are legally obligated to honor the Subpoenas and have identified no
valid privilege that would justify their refusal to comply. Their unlawful withholding of
information is injuring the Committee in carrying out two critical constitutional functions:
conducting effective oversight of the Executive Branch and its officials, who have provided false
testimony to Congress and misled Congress and the American public; and determining whether
legislation is necessary, potentially on an emergency basis, to ensure the integrity of the 2020
Census.
10. Although the citizenship question will not be added to the 2020 Census, the
Committee’s investigation has identified “a number of live concerns relating to potential political
influences on the nonpartisan Census process, the Commerce Department’s willingness to
compromise an accurate enumeration, and both the Commerce Department’s and DOJ’s
willingness to misrepresent their actions in connection with the Census.”21 “To be effective”
with respect to the 2020 Census, any remedial legislation “must be implemented quickly.”22
and Secretary Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Dep’t of Com., to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House of
Representatives (July 17, 2019), https://perma.cc/V359-6XXV, appended as Exhibit L.
19
See H. Res. 497, 116th Cong. (2019); H. Rep. No. 116-125, 116th Cong., 44 (2019).
20
Commerce Secretary Ross in Contempt of Congress, 7 (Nov. 12, 2019), https://perma.cc/88XZ-
YNAJ, appended as Exhibit G.
21
Id. at 3.
22
Id. at 15.
7
11. The stakes for Congress and the American people could not be higher, nor the
consequences of the ongoing injury more profound. The 2020 Census will have at least ten years
of direct effect on the composition of the House by determining population counts, as well as on
the methodology by which the House determines the apportionment of federal funds to the states.
If there is maladministration of the 2020 Census, the effects will be felt for decades, and once
complete, the damage to the Census cannot be undone.
12. Every day that the Committee is deprived of information necessary to identify and
redress Executive Branch maladministration, and every day its constitutional functions are
impeded, the Committee is substantially and immediately injured in ways that no later remedy
could repair. “[W]ith the clock ticking on census preparations,” any delay could cost the
Committee “a meaningful chance to obtain any relief.”23
13. The Committee now seeks declaratory and injunctive relief compelling
Defendants to comply with their legal obligations.
JURISDICTION AND VENUE
14. This Court has jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1331. The Committee’s
claims arise under Article I of the U.S. Constitution.
15. This Court has authority to issue a declaratory judgment and order other relief that
is just and proper pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §§ 2201 and 2202.
16. Venue is proper in this Court pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1391(b)(2).
23
New York v. U.S. Dep’t of Com., 351 F. Supp. 3d 502, 517 (S.D.N.Y. 2019).
8
PARTIES
17. Plaintiff Committee on Oversight and Reform is the principal oversight body of
the House. It is authorized to investigate subjects within the Committee’s legislative jurisdiction
as well as “any matter” within the jurisdiction of the other standing House Committees.24
18. Defendant William P. Barr is sued in his official capacity as Attorney General of
the United States and head of DOJ.
19. Defendant Wilbur L. Ross, Jr. is sued in his official capacity as Secretary of the
United States Department of Commerce.
ALLEGATIONS
I. LEGAL FRAMEWORK
20. Article I of the U.S. Constitution provides the United States Congress with “[a]ll
legislative Powers,”25 which includes authority to conduct oversight of Executive Branch
agencies and investigate any subject on which “legislation could be had.”26 The Supreme Court
has repeatedly affirmed that the Congressional “power of inquiry—with process to enforce it—is
an essential and appropriate auxiliary to the legislative function.”27 The “[i]ssuance of
subpoenas,” in particular, “has long been held to be a legitimate use by Congress of its power to
investigate … [and] an indispensable ingredient of lawmaking.”28 The scope of these powers is
24
See Rules of the House of Representatives, 116th Congress (Jan. 11, 2019) (hereinafter
“House Rules”), Rule X, cl. 4; see H. Res. 6 (116th Cong.) (2019) (adopting House Rules for
116th Congress).
25
U.S. Const. Art. I, § 1.
26
Eastland v. U.S. Servicemen’s Fund, 421 U.S. 491, 504 n.15 (1975) (quotation marks
omitted) (quoting McGrain v. Daugherty, 273 U.S. 135, 177 (1927)).
27
McGrain, 273 U.S. at 174.
28
Eastland, 421 U.S. at 504–05.
9
“as penetrating and far-reaching as the potential power to enact and appropriate under the
Constitution.”29
21. Article I specifically provides Congress with plenary power to conduct the census
“in such Manner as [it] shall by Law direct.”30 Because the Constitution “vests Congress, not the
Executive, with wide discretion over the conduct of the” census,31 and because “it is only
[through] Congress’s statutory delegations that the Secretary of Commerce has any authority to
design and conduct the decennial census at all,” the Commerce Department’s “authority extends
only as far as Congress has provided, ends where Congress says it ends, and can only be
exercised subject to the conditions and constraints that Congress has imposed.”32
22. The Rulemaking Clause of the Constitution authorizes the House to “determine
the Rules of its Proceedings,” which govern the House during its two-year term.33 Pursuant to
that power and by House Rule X, the House has established the Committee on Oversight and
Reform, granting it legislative jurisdiction over “[p]opulation and demography generally,
including the Census,” and more broadly over the “[o]verall economy, efficiency, and
management of government operations and activities.”34 The Committee, accordingly, has
authority to introduce legislation to improve the administration of the census, ensure the integrity
of its processes, and further the accuracy of its results.
29
Barenblatt v. United States, 360 U.S. 109, 111 (1959).
30
U.S. Const. Art. I § 2, cl. 3.
31
New York v. U.S. Dep’t of Com., 351 F. Supp. 3d 502, 641 (S.D.N.Y. 2019) (quotation
marks omitted) (citing Wisconsin v. City of New York, 517 U.S. 1, 15 (1996)).
32
Id.
33
U.S. Const. Art. I, § 5, cl. 2.
34
House Rule X, cl. 1(n)(6), (n)(8).
10
23. Like other standing committees of the House, the Committee has oversight
responsibilities over matters within its legislative jurisdiction.35 Additionally, as the principal
oversight committee of the House, the Committee “may at any time conduct investigations of
any matter without regard to” the jurisdiction of other standing committees.36 In other words, the
Committee’s investigative jurisdiction is coextensive with the jurisdiction of the entire House of
Representatives.
24. As a standing committee, the Committee has “general oversight
responsibilities … in order to assist the House” in (1) the “analysis, appraisal, and evaluation” of
“the application, administration, execution, and effectiveness of Federal laws” and any
“conditions and circumstances that may indicate the necessity or desirability of enacting new or
additional legislation”; and (2) “its formulation, consideration, and enactment of changes in
Federal laws, and of such additional legislation as may be necessary or appropriate.”37 The
Committee’s responsibility to “review and study” any laws and programs within its jurisdiction
applies “whether or not a bill or resolution has been introduced with respect thereto.”38
25. Pursuant to House Rule X, clause 2, the Committee submitted to the House its
oversight plan for the 116th Congress.39 The Committee’s reported plan covers “preparations for
the Decennial Census in 2020,” including “Census planning, preparation, and readiness;
technology and cybersecurity; communications; and other issues.”40 The Committee’s plan
explains that “[t]he Census is mandated by the Constitution and requires the Administration to
35
House Rule X, cl. 2(b)(1).
36
House Rule X, cl. 4(c)(2).
37
House Rule X, cl. 2(a).
38
House Rule X, cl. 2(b).
39
H. Rep. No. 116-40 (2019).
40
Id. at 160.
11
count every person in the United States,” and that, “[d]ue to the complexity and importance of
the Census, robust oversight is critical to ensure that the Census Bureau is ready and able to
conduct an accurate and fair count.”41 In addition, the Committee planned to “examine …
efforts to add a citizenship question to the Census after the deadline to notify [] Congress of new
census topics,” and in particular, “examine inaccurate testimony to Congress” by Executive
Branch officials relating to “the origination and purported need for the citizenship question.”42
26. House Rule XI, clause 2(m) grants the Committee authority to “carry[] out any of
its functions and duties” by issuing subpoenas and taking testimony. Specifically, the
Committee may “require, by subpoena or otherwise, the attendance and testimony of such
witnesses and the production of such books, records, correspondence, memoranda, papers, and
documents as it considers necessary.”43
27. The Rules of the Committee on Oversight and Reform (“Committee Rules”)
confer on the Committee’s Chairman the power to “[a]uthorize and issue subpoenas as provided
in House Rule XI, clause 2(m), in the conduct of any investigation or activity or series of
investigations or activities within the jurisdiction of the Committee.”44 The Chair “may order the
taking of depositions, under oath and pursuant to notice or subpoena,”45 and “[o]bservers or
41
Id.
42
Id. at 161.
43
House Rule XI, cl. 2(m)(1)(B).
44
A Resolution Offered by Chairman Elijah E. Cummings, Comm. on Oversight and
Reform, 116th Congress (hereinafter “Committee Rules”), Rule 12(g), https://perma.cc/545B-
ELBT.
45
Committee Rule 15(a). The House Rules give the Committee authority to “adopt a rule
authorizing and regulating the taking of depositions by a member or counsel of the committee,
including pursuant to subpoena.” House Rule X, clause 4(c)(3)(A).
12
counsel for other persons [than the witness], or for agencies under investigation, may not
attend.”46
28. The Committee Rules authorize the Chair to “rule on assertions of privilege.”47
The Committee Rules require that such assertions “clearly state the specific privilege being
asserted and the reason for the assertion on or before the scheduled date of testimony or
appearance, or upon a demand from the Chair of the Committee that provides for a subsequent
due date.”48 The assertions must also be “set forth in a privilege log that includes the following
information for each document for which a privilege is asserted: (a) every privilege asserted; (b)
the type of document; (c) the general subject matter; (d) the date, author, addressee, and any
other recipients; (e) the relationship of the author and addressee to each other; and (f) the basis
for the privilege asserted.”49
29. Pursuant to House Rule II.8(b) and as confirmed by H. Res. 430 and H. Res.
497,50 the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (“BLAG”) voted to authorize the Committee to
46
Committee Rule 15(e).
47
Committee Rule 16(c).
48
Committee Rule 16(c)(1).
49
Committee Rule 16(c)(2).
50
H. Res. 430, passed by the House on June 11, 2019, provided that the “chair of each
standing and permanent select committee, when authorized by the Bipartisan Legal Advisory
Group, retains the ability to initiate or intervene in any judicial proceeding before a Federal court
on behalf of such committee.” H. Res. 430, 116th Cong. (June 11, 2019). H. Res. 497,
subsequently passed by the House on July 17, 2019, held Attorney General Barr and Secretary
Ross in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with the Subpoenas, and further authorized
the Committee Chairman to “take all necessary steps to enforce” the Subpoenas, “including, but
not limited to, seeking authorization from the House of Representatives through a vote of the
Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group pursuant to clause 8(b) of rule II, and H. Res. 430, to initiate or
to intervene in proceedings in any federal court of competent jurisdiction, to seek judgments
affirming the duty of the subpoena recipients to comply with the above-referenced subpoenas,
and to seek any appropriate ancillary relief, including injunctive relief.” H. Res. 497, 116th
Cong. (July 17, 2019).
13
initiate this suit.51 BLAG “speaks for, and articulates the institutional position of, the House in
all litigation matters,”52 and its vote “to authorize litigation and to articulate the institutional
position of the House in that litigation is the equivalent of a vote of the full House of
Representatives.”53
II. FACTUAL ALLEGATIONS
30. The Committee’s investigation has revealed that Secretary Ross decided early in
his tenure to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census and then, with increasing urgency,
directed his staff to manufacture a legal justification for that decision. That effort failed at every
turn until Secretary Ross personally implored the Attorney General to supply Secretary Ross
with the legal pretext he needed. The result—a DOJ “request” that the Commerce Department
add the citizenship question to aid DOJ’s enforcement of the Voting Rights Act—was, as the
Supreme Court has since concluded, pretextual: It was an explanation “contrived” after the fact
to provide a “distraction” from the real reasons for the decision.
31. The Committee has been unable to confirm the true reasons for Secretary Ross’s
decision because, even though the courts have concluded that Secretary Ross acted in bad faith to
conceal his actual rationale, and even though the Committee has gone to great lengths to
accommodate Defendants’ purported concerns, Defendants have refused to comply with valid
Subpoenas for critical information. Their obstruction has resulted in an impasse; following a
51
The Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group comprises the Honorable Nancy Pelosi, Speaker
of the House, the Honorable Steny H. Hoyer, Majority Leader, the Honorable James Clyburn,
Majority Whip, the Honorable Kevin McCarthy, Republican Leader, and the Honorable Steve
Scalise, Republican Whip. See House Rule II.8(b). The Republican Leader and the Republican
Whip dissented from the decision to authorize this suit.
52
House Rule II.8(b).
53
H. Res. 430, 116th Cong. (June 11, 2019).
14
blanket, indiscriminate invocation of Executive Privilege over any remaining documents,
Defendants have ceased all productions in response to the Subpoenas.
A. Secretary Ross, Acting in Concert with Other Trump Administration

Officials, Decided to Add the Citizenship Question Shortly After He Took
Office
1. The Trump Campaign and Transition Team Discussed Adding a

Citizenship Question
32. As early as 2016, members of the Trump campaign considered the possibility of
adding a citizenship question to the Decennial Census. Former Kansas Secretary of State Kris
Kobach, who served as an “informal adviser to the President throughout the campaign,” stated
that he “certainly discussed the issue with people during the campaign.”54 These discussions
continued during the transition to the Trump Administration. A former member of the Transition
Team, Gene Hamilton, stated in an interview with Committee staff that Mr. Kobach, who also
served on the transition, contacted him in “early November of 2016” concerning the citizenship
question.55
33. Republican gerrymandering expert Thomas Hofeller played a foundational role in
these conversations. Mr. Hofeller, who is now deceased, wrote a secret study in 2015 that
analyzed the potential political and demographic effects of legislative redistricting on the basis of
citizen voting age population. The study concluded that counting voting-age citizens, rather than
total population, for purposes of legislative districts “would be advantageous to Republicans and
Non-Hispanic Whites.”56 It also concluded: “Without a question on citizenship being included
54
Transcript, Tel. Interview with Kris Kobach, Comm. on Oversight and Reform, 8, 11
(June 3, 2019), https://perma.cc/3CNN-4FQA.
55
Transcript, Interview with Gene P. Hamilton, Comm. on Oversight and Reform, 18
(May 30, 2019), https://perma.cc/WB2Y-9EMU.
56
Thomas Hofeller, The Use of Citizen Voting Age Population in Redistricting, 9 (2015),
https://perma.cc/5X28-4AP5, appended as Exhibit M.
15
on the 2020 Decennial Census questionnaire, the use of citizen voting age population is
functionally unworkable.”57
34. Earlier in 2015, the current Chief of Staff at the Census Bureau, Christa Jones,
had communicated on her personal email account with Mr. Hofeller about the Bureau’s effort to
“evaluate and compare different census content … prior to making final decisions about the
content in the 2020 Census.” She wrote in that correspondence: “This can … be an opportunity
to mention citizenship.”58
35. Mr. Hofeller’s views on the census were influential. Mark Neuman, the Trump
Transition Team official responsible for census matters, testified in a deposition as part of the
census litigation that he spoke multiple times with Mr. Hofeller about adding a citizenship
question to the Census.59
57
Id. at 8.
58
Email from Christa Jones to Tom Hofeller, “Fwd: FR Notice” (Jan. 7, 2015, 9:04 AM),
https://tinyurl.com/re3zhfo, appended as Exhibit N (citing Proposed Information Collection;
Comment Request; 2015 National Content Test, 79 Fed. Reg. 71377 (Dec. 2, 2014)); see also
Press Release, Committee Seeks Interview with Census Bureau Chief of Staff After New Evidence
Reveals Personal Emails With Republican Gerrymandering Expert, Comm. on Oversight and
Reform (June 18, 2019), https://perma.cc/2WGU-XESR, appended as Exhibit O. In a
transcribed interview with Committee staff, Ms. Jones said Mr. Hofeller expressed interest in
using the citizenship question for “the Republican redistricting effort.” Transcript, Interview
with Christa Jones, Comm. on Oversight and Reform, 18 (July 31, 2019),
https://perma.cc/8UMP-82FA. According to Ms. Jones, she told him that a citizenship question
“would have a negative impact on the response rate to the census, and that the Census Bureau
would be concerned about the impacts to the nonresponse follow-up and the differential
undercount.” Id. at 27. Ms. Jones said she also knew Mr. Hofeller’s partner, Dale Oldham, and
that over the years he advocated for a citizenship question for purposes of redistricting and
apportionment “[p]robably more times than I can remember.” Id. at 29. Ms. Jones said that she
was not involved in the Department of Commerce’s decision to add a citizenship question to the
2020 Census, that she learned of it through news reports, and she felt “concern for the census and
the Census Bureau” because the citizenship question was a “late design change” that could hurt
response rates and lead to a differential undercount. Id. at 58.
59
Deposition of A. Mark Neuman at 40–43, Civ. No. 8:18-cv-01041-GJH (D. Md. Oct.
28, 2018).
16
2. The President and His Top Advisors Discussed Adding a Citizenship

Question within Days of the Inauguration
36. Within days of President Trump’s inauguration, the President, the President’s
Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor Steve Bannon, and the President’s Chief of Staff Reince
Priebus held meetings with Mr. Kobach to discuss the addition of the citizenship question. Mr.
Kobach recalled two meetings in “late January–early February of 2017,” one with Mr. Bannon
and a second with President Trump, who may have been accompanied by Mr. Bannon and Mr.
Priebus.60
37. Although the White House instructed Mr. Kobach not to divulge to the
Committee the content of those meetings, and his lawyer instructed him not to disclose whether
he had other meetings with the White House on the citizenship question,61 Mr. Kobach has stated
publicly that he raised the issue with the President because he “wanted to make sure the
[P]resident was well aware” and noted that the President “absolutely was interested in this.”62
3. Secretary Ross Decided to Add the Citizenship Question Early in His

Tenure and Pressed His Staff to Implement That Decision
38. Secretary Ross was sworn in as Commerce Secretary on February 28, 2017, and
immediately directed his staff to pursue the addition of a citizenship question to the Census.
39. Just ten days after the swearing-in, Secretary Ross’s Director of Policy, Earl
Comstock, wrote an email to Secretary Ross regarding “Your Question on the Census,”
60
Transcript, Tel. Interview with Kris Kobach, Comm. on Oversight and Reform, 25–26
(June 3, 2019), https://perma.cc/3CNN-4FQA.
61
Memorandum from Majority Staff, Comm. on Oversight and Reform, to Members,
Comm. on Oversight and Reform, Re: White House Interference with Oversight Committee
Interview of Kris Kobach, 3, 6 (June 7, 2019), https://perma.cc/GE57-U5Y7, appended as
Exhibit P.
62
Bryan Lowry, “That Citizenship Question on the 2020 Census? Kobach Says He
Pitched It to Trump,” Kansas City Star (Mar. 27, 2018),
https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article207007581.html.
17
explaining that “undocumented residents (aliens),” along with all other “citizens and
noncitizens” residing in the United States, “are to be included in the census and thus in the
apportionment counts.” Mr. Comstock also wrote that “neither the 2000 nor the 2010 Census
asked about citizenship,” citing and including a Wall Street Journal article entitled, “The Pitfalls
of Counting Illegal Immigrants.”63
40. During the same period, Secretary Ross was receiving input from other Trump
Administration officials about their desire for a citizenship question. In April 2017—eight
months before DOJ sent its request letter—Secretary Ross’s assistant wrote in an email that
“Steve Bannon has asked that the Secretary talk to someone about the Census.”64 In testimony
before the Committee on March 14, 2019, Secretary Ross stated that Mr. Bannon had called to
ask “if I [Secretary Ross] would take a call from Kris Kobach.” Secretary Ross recalled that Mr.
Bannon “said that Kobach had a question that he thought should be asked on the census.”
Secretary Ross testified that, “shortly thereafter, possibly the next day, I did have a conversation
with Kris Kobach.”65 In a subsequent email, Mr. Kobach recalled that his conversation with
Secretary Ross had been “at the direction of Steve Bannon.”66
63
Email from Earl Comstock, Director, Off. of Pol’y and Strategic Plan., Dep’t of Com.,
to Secretary Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Dep’t of Com. (Mar. 10, 2017, 8:31 PM),
https://perma.cc/HT7T-5KLR?type=image, appended as Exhibit Q.
64
Email from Brooke Alexander, Executive Assistant to the Secretary, Dep’t of Com., to
Hilary Geary (Apr. 5, 2017, 4:24 PM), https://perma.cc/8NJF-T73G?type=image, appended as
Exhibit R.
65
Hearing with Commerce Secretary Ross Before the H. Comm. on Oversight and
Reform, 116th Cong. 16, 54 (Mar. 14, 2019), https://perma.cc/WL25-NTHU, excerpts appended
as Exhibit S.
66
Email from Kris Kobach, Secretary of State of Kansas, to Wendy Teramoto, Chief of
Staff, Dep’t of Com. (July 21, 2017, 4:34 PM), https://perma.cc/8WQG-QYEH?type=image,
appended as Exhibit T.
18
41. A week after Mr. Bannon contacted Secretary Ross to connect him with Mr.
Kobach, on April 13, 2017, Mr. Comstock emailed Mr. Neuman—the former Transition Team
member who was informally advising Secretary Ross—to ask when the Commerce Department
needed to notify Congress about the questions that would be on the American Community
Survey and the Decennial Census.67 Mr. Neuman replied, “There will be another opportunity
next year.”68
42. While Secretary Ross was having these external conversations, he was anxiously
pressing his staff to move faster to implement his decision to add the citizenship question to the
2020 Census. Mr. Comstock, who spearheaded the effort to justify the question’s addition,
testified under oath that he considered it his task to “find the best rationale” for the Secretary’s
decision, recognizing that the Secretary’s actual basis “may or may not be … legally-valid.”69
43. To that end, Mr. Comstock attempted to elicit requests for the citizenship question
from several executive agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security and DOJ.70
44. James McHenry, then-Deputy Associate Attorney General, told Mr. Comstock
that DOJ would not advocate for the question’s addition due to negative press coverage
following FBI Director James Comey’s firing. McHenry referred Mr. Comstock to Gene
67
to Mark Neuman (Apr. 13, 2017, 9:58 PM), appended as Exhibit U.
68
Email from Mark Neuman to Earl Comstock, Director, Off. of Pol’y and Strategic
Plan., Dep’t of Com. (Apr. 14, 2017, 3:41 AM), appended as Exhibit U.
69
Dep. Of Earl Comstock at 267:5, 11–14, Docket No. 490-2, New York v. U.S. Dep’t of
Com., 1:18-cv-02921 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 5, 2018).
70
Memorandum from Earl Comstock, Director, Off. of Pol’y and Strategic Plan., to
Secretary Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Dep’t of Com. (Sept. 8, 2017), https://perma.cc/QS79-8AZB,
appended as Exhibit V; Transcript, Interview with Gene P. Hamilton, Comm. on Oversight and
Reform (May 30, 2019), https://perma.cc/WB2Y-9EMU.
19
Hamilton of the Department of Homeland Security.71 In a transcribed interview with Committee
staff, Mr. Hamilton stated that he told Mr. Comstock that the Department of Homeland Security
“didn’t really have a use for the information.”72
45. Mr. Comstock documented in a memorandum to Secretary Ross his failed
attempts to find an agency to request the citizenship question.73
46. While Mr. Comstock was unsuccessfully shopping for a legal pretext for the
Secretary’s decision, Secretary Ross was growing increasingly impatient. On May 2, 2017,
Secretary Ross exchanged emails with multiple Commerce Department officials to demand that
they implement his decision more quickly (together, the “May 2 Emails”). In one such email to
Mr. Comstock and Commerce Department Chief Financial Officer Ellen Herbst, Ross wrote: “I
am mystified why nothing [has] been done in response to my months old request that we include
the citizenship question.”74 Mr. Comstock assured Secretary Ross that “we will get that in
place,” explaining that “[w]e need to work with Justice to get them to request that citizenship be
added back as a census question.”75
71
appended as Exhibit V.
72
Transcript, Interview with Gene P. Hamilton, Comm. on Oversight and Reform (May
30, 2019), https://perma.cc/WB2Y-9EMU.
73
appended as Exhibit V.
74
Email from Secretary Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Dep’t of Com., to Earl Comstock, Director,
Off. of Pol’y and Strategic Plann., and Ellen Herbst, Chief Financial Officer, Dep’t of Com.
(May 2, 2017, 10:04 AM), https://perma.cc/U6KU-NBEM?type=image, appended as Exhibit
W.
75
Email from Earl Comstock, Director, Off. of Pol’y and Strategic Plan., to Secretary
Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Dep’t of Com. and Ellen Herbst, Chief Financial Officer, Dep’t of Com.
(May 2, 2017, 2:19 PM), appended as Exhibit H.
20
47. Apparently contributing to Secretary Ross’s sense of urgency, Mr. Kobach
continued to press the need for the addition of a citizenship question. On July 14, 2017, Mr.
Kobach emailed Secretary Ross to follow up “on our telephone discussion from a few months
ago.” He wrote that adding a citizenship question to the Census was “essential” and would
address “the problem that aliens who do not actually ‘reside’ in the United States are still
counted for congressional apportionment purposes.” Mr. Kobach also included a sample
citizenship question.76
48. Secretary Ross’s Chief of Staff, Wendy Teramoto, then arranged a call between
Mr. Kobach and the Secretary for July 25, 2017.77 Mr. Kobach told the Committee that he did
not recall whether he had that additional call with the Secretary, but it is reflected on Secretary
Ross’s calendar.78
49. Two weeks later, between August 8 and 10, 2017, Secretary Ross exchanged
additional emails with Mr. Comstock regarding DOJ’s potential assistance (the “August
Emails”). In those exchanges, Secretary Ross pressed Mr. Comstock for an update and made
clear he would not tolerate more delay: “If [DOJ] still ha[s] not come to a conclusion please let
76
Email from Kris Kobach, Kansas Secretary of State, to Secretary Wilbur L. Ross, Jr.,
Dep’t of Com. (July 14, 2017, 9:12 AM), https://perma.cc/P2NU-7S5P?type=image, appended
as Exhibit X. The sample citizenship question contained six potential answers and asked
noncitizens for the year of their naturalization and their green card or visa status.
77
Email from Wendy Teramoto, Chief of Staff, Dep’t of Com., to Kris Kobach, Kansas
Secretary of State (July 24, 2017, 1:39 PM), appended as Exhibit Y.
78
Transcript, Tel. Interview with Kris Kobach, Comm. on Oversight and Reform, 68
(June 3, 2019), https://perma.cc/3CNN-4FQA; Entry on Secretary Wilbur L. Ross, Jr.’s
Calendar, “11:00 AM - 11:30 AM Call w/ Kris Kobach” (July 25, 2017),
https://tinyurl.com/us5bua4, appended as Exhibit Z.
21
me know your contact person and I will call the AG.”79 Comstock replied: “Mr. Secretary—we
are preparing a memo and full briefing for you on the citizenship question …. Since this issue
will go to the Supreme Court we need to be diligent in preparing the administrative record.”80
Secretary Ross responded: “I would like to be briefed on Friday by phone …. [W]e should be
very careful, about everything, whether or not it is likely to end up in the SC.”81
50. In early September, as reflected in several email exchanges with Mr. Comstock
and others (“September 1 Emails”), Secretary Ross continued to express frustration about having
“received no update … [on] the issue of the census question.”82
51. On September 7, 2017, Mr. Comstock exchanged emails with the Commerce
Department’s General Counsel, Peter Davidson, and his senior advisor, James Uthmeier, with the
subject line “Census Matter Follow-Up” (“September 7 Emails”). Mr. Comstock pressed them
79
Off. of Pol’y and Strategic Plan., Dep’t of Com. (Aug. 8, 2017, 1:20 PM),
https://tinyurl.com/wv3x938, appended as Exhibit AA.
80
to Secretary Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Dep’t of Com. (Aug. 9, 2017, 10:24 AM),
https://tinyurl.com/wv3x938, appended as Exhibit BB. In a subsequent email, James Uthmeier,
the Commerce official who helped draft the withheld memorandum alongside Mr. Comstock, see
infra ¶ 55, indicated his understanding that the data collected from the question could be used
“for apportionment” by “Congress (or possibly the President).” See New York v. U.S. Dep’t of
Com., 351 F. Supp. 3d at 553 (quoting Aug. 11, 2017 email from James Uthmeier, Senior
Counsel to the General Counsel, Dep’t of Com., to Earl Comstock, Deputy Chief of Staff and
Director of Policy, Dep’t of Com., 2 (Aug. 11, 2017)).
81
Off. of Pol’y and Strategic Plan., Dep’t of Com. (Aug. 10, 2017, 7:38 PM),
https://tinyurl.com/wv3x938, appended as Exhibit BB.
82
See Email from Secretary Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Dep’t of Com., to Earl Comstock,
Director, Off. of Pol’y and Strategic Plan., Dep’t of Com. (Sept. 1, 2017, 3:12 AM), appended as
Exhibit CC; Email from Earl Comstock, Director, Off. of Pol’y and Strategic Plan., Dep’t of
Com., to Secretary Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Dep’t of Com. (Sept. 1, 2017, 3:21 AM), appended as
Exhibit DD.
22
to “set[] up a call for tomorrow,” and emphasized, “The Secretary is asking for progress on
this.”83
52. Frustrated with DOJ’s unwillingness to supply him with the request he needed, on
September 16, 2017, Secretary Ross asked for a call directly with then-Attorney General Jeff
Sessions.84
53. The following day, on September 17, 2017, a senior counselor to the Attorney
General wrote to Secretary Ross’s Chief of Staff, reporting that “it sounds like we can do
whatever you all need us to do and the delay was due to a miscommunication. The AG is eager
to assist.”85 Secretary Ross’s Chief of Staff confirmed that the Attorney General and Secretary
Ross had spoken.86
54. At that point, then-Acting Assistant Attorney General John Gore undertook to
draft a request on behalf of DOJ. Mr. Gore primarily relied on the advice of political appointees,
rather than career officials with experience in Voting Rights Act cases.87 Mr. Gore also drew
83
to Peter Davidson, General Counsel, Dep’t of Com., et al. (Sept. 7, 2017, 6:13 PM), appended as
Exhibit EE.
84
See Email from Danielle Cutrona, Senior Counselor, Dep’t of Justice, to Wendy
Teramoto, Chief of Staff, Dep’t of Com. (Sept. 17, 2017, 12:10 PM), https://perma.cc/GU4B-
DNHQ?type=image, appended as Exhibit FF; see also Transcript, Interview of Gene Hamilton,
Comm. on Oversight and Reform, 29 (May 30, 2019), https://perma.cc/WB2Y-9EMU
(explaining that the Attorney General had spoken directly to Secretary Ross about whether the
Department could use citizenship information from the Census).
85
Email from Danielle Cutrona, Senior Counselor, Dep’t of Justice, to Wendy Teramoto,
Chief of Staff, Dep’t of Com. (Sept. 17, 2017, 12:10 PM), https://perma.cc/GU4B-
DNHQ?type=image (emphasis added), appended as Exhibit FF.
86
Id.
87
New York v. U.S. Dep’t of Com., 351 F. Supp. 3d at 555–56.
23
heavily on the contributions of senior officials at the Commerce Department. He had multiple
conversations with Mr. Davidson and Mr. Uthmeier about the citizenship question.88
55. Mr. Uthmeier had drafted a secret memorandum (“Uthmeier Memorandum”),
which had been shared with Secretary Ross, analyzing legal issues surrounding the citizenship
question.89 Mr. Uthmeier had a copy of the memorandum, along with a personal note, hand-
delivered to Mr. Gore. In his interview with Committee staff, Mr. Gore refused to say why Mr.
Uthmeier told him he wanted to deliver the memorandum by hand and refused to disclose the
contents of the note or memorandum. DOJ attorneys directed Mr. Gore not to tell the Committee
the substance of any of his conversations about the citizenship question with the Attorney
General, the Attorney General’s staff, Mr. Davidson, or Mr. Uthmeier.90
56. Mr. Gore also told Committee staff that Mr. Davidson contacted him and
informed him that former Trump Transition Team member Mark Neuman would contact him
about the citizenship question.91 Mr. Gore then spoke to Mr. Neuman and subsequently
“reviewed some documents and information regarding the census” that Mr. Neuman provided
him.92
88
Transcript, Interview with John M. Gore, Comm. on Oversight and Reform, 105–09
(Mar. 7, 2019), https://perma.cc/BXT5-KF8C.
89
to Secretary Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Dep’t of Com. (Aug. 11, 2017, 4:12 PM), appended as Exhibit
GG; Transcript, Interview with James Uthmeier, Comm. on Oversight and Reform, 75 (June 11,
2019), https://perma.cc/88AW-AB9W; see also Memorandum from Majority Staff, Comm. on
Oversight and Reform, to Members, Comm. on Oversight and Reform, Re: Interview with James
Uthmeier on Addition of Citizenship Question to Census (June 25, 2019),
https://perma.cc/3YGA-E2CY, appended as Exhibit HH.
90
Transcript, Interview with John M. Gore, Comm. on Oversight and Reform, 105–09
(Mar. 7, 2019), https://perma.cc/BXT5-KF8C.
91
Id. at 22–25.
92
Id. at 25.
24
57. Among other documents, on October 6, 2017, Mr. Neuman provided Mr. Gore “a
draft letter that would request reinstatement of the citizenship question on the census
questionnaire.”93 That draft letter contained language that matched, word-for-word, a document
that had been created on August 30, 2017, and was found on the hard drive of Mr. Hofeller, the
Republican gerrymandering expert.94
58. This was no coincidence. On August 30, 2017, Mr. Neuman had sent a text
message to Mr. Hofeller asking him to review language for a letter that Mr. Neuman drafted to
request the addition of a citizenship question.95 The letter, drafted to purportedly be from DOJ to
the Director of the Census Bureau, stated that citizenship data was necessary to ensure
“compliance with requirements of the Voting Rights Act and its application in legislative
redistricting.”96 Part of the draft letter read: “We understand that the Bureau personnel may
believe that [American Community Survey] data on citizenship was sufficient for redistricting
purposes. We wanted the Bureau to be aware that two recent Court cases have underscored that
ACS data is not viable and/or sufficient for purposes of redistricting.”97 Mr. Hofeller told Mr.
93
Id. at 26; Text message from Mark Neuman to John Gore (Oct. 6, 2017, 11:51 AM),
https://perma.cc/JQH9-WLX2, appended as Exhibit II.
94
See Letter from John A. Freedman, Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP, to the
Honorable Jesse M. Furman, United States District Court for the Southern District of New York,
3 (May 30, 2019), https://perma.cc/4MS8-77RG, appended as Exhibit JJ; see also Michael
Wines, “Deceased G.O.P. Strategist’s Hard Drives Reveal New Details on the Census
Citizenship Question,” N.Y. Times (May 30, 2019), https://perma.cc/CRA6-WB8C.
95
96
Draft Letter from Dep’t of Justice to John H. Thompson, Director, Census Bureau,
https://perma.cc/R6DV-8G9G, appended as Exhibit KK.
97
Id.
25
Neuman that his partner, an adviser for the Republican Party on political gerrymandering, “read
it, and says it is fine as written.”98
59. Mr. Neuman met with Mr. Gore in person in October 2017.99 Mr. Neuman
provided a “readout” of that meeting to Mr. Davidson, who immediately briefed Secretary
Ross.100 Mr. Davidson then sent a text message to Mr. Neuman to inform him that Secretary
Ross “appreciated the update and your help.”101
60. Meanwhile, Secretary Ross remained impatient, even as the DOJ letter he had
requested was being drafted. He personally intervened to speed the process again on November
27, 2017, writing to Mr. Davidson: “We are out of time. Please set up a call for me tomorrow
with whoever is the responsible person at Justice. We must have this resolved.”102
61. Two weeks later, on December 12, 2017, DOJ sent the Commerce Department its
letter purporting to request the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 Census. Signed by
Arthur E. Gary, General Counsel, Justice Management Division of the Department of Justice, the
letter (“Gary Letter”) asserted without support that the citizenship question would provide data
“critical to the Department’s enforcement efforts under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and
98
Email from Thomas Hofeller to Mark Neuman (Aug. 30, 2017, 2:52 PM),
https://perma.cc/KL5Y-TU48, appended as Exhibit LL.
99
Text message from Mark Neuman to John Gore (Oct. 6, 2017, 11:51 AM),
https://perma.cc/JQH9-WLX2, appended as Exhibit II.
100
Email from Peter Davidson, Gen. Counsel, Dep’t of Com., to Secretary Wilbur Ross,
Dep’t of Com. (Oct. 8, 2017, 6:47 PM), https://perma.cc/K8P9-E734, appended as Exhibit MM.
101
Text Message from Peter Davidson, Gen. Counsel, Dep’t of Com., to Mark Neuman
(Oct. 8, 2017, 2:09 PM), https://perma.cc/TYG5-GXJV, appended as Exhibit NN. Mr.
Neuman’s text messages with Mr. Gore and Mr. Davidson were among the documents withheld
from the Committee by DOJ and the Department of Commerce. They were produced to the
Committee by Mr. Neuman.
102
Email from Secretary Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Dep’t of Com., to Peter Davidson, Gen.
Counsel, Dep’t of Com. (Nov. 27, 2017, 7:23 PM), https://perma.cc/5V7X-4F2L?type=image,
appended as Exhibit OO.
26
its important protections against racial discrimination in voting.”103 The letter did not mention
legislative redistricting.
62. Census Bureau officials were immediately skeptical of DOJ’s request. On
December 22, 2017, Acting Census Bureau Director Ron Jarmin requested a meeting with Mr.
Gary.104 Mr. Jarmin noted that the Census Bureau believed it could provide DOJ with the data it
requested without adding a citizenship question to the Census, and that not adding the citizenship
question “would result in higher quality data produced at lower cost.”105 Despite its purported
interest in that goal, “DOJ declined the Census Bureau’s offer to discuss alternative ways to meet
DOJ’s stated need for improved citizenship data.”106 Mr. Gore told the Committee that “the
Attorney General decided not to have the meeting” requested by the Census Bureau.107
63. Secretary Ross similarly rejected the advice of Census Bureau officials and other
top experts who advocated against adding a citizenship question. In January and March of 2018,
Dr. John Abowd, the Census Bureau’s associate director for research and methodology and chief
scientist, informed Secretary Ross through his staff that the proposed citizenship question would
be “very costly, harm[] the quality of the census count, and would use substantially less accurate
103
Letter from Arthur E. Gary, Gen. Counsel, Justice Management Division, Dep’t of
Justice to Ron Jarmin, Acting Director, Census Bureau (Dec. 12, 2017),
https://tinyurl.com/vemtmxx, appended as Exhibit PP.
104
Email from Ron Jarmin, Acting Director, Census Bureau, to Arthur Gary, Gen.
Counsel, Justice Management Division, Dep’t of Justice (Dec. 22, 2017, 3:32 PM), appended as
Exhibit QQ.
105
Id.
106
Dep’t of Com. v. New York, 139 S. Ct. at 2572, 2575.
107
7, 2019), https://perma.cc/BXT5-KF8C. Mr. Gore refused to answer questions as to why the
Attorney General declined the Census Bureau’s offer. See id. at 148.
27
citizenship status data than are available from administrative sources.”108 He provided a
“conservative” estimate that including the citizenship question would cause a 5.1% decline in
self-response among noncitizen households, a 432,000 reduction in correct enumerations, and
additional costs of at least $27.5 million, and he warned that the actual numbers could be “much
greater.”109 On January 26, 2018, six former Census Bureau Directors from both Republican and
Democratic administrations wrote to Secretary Ross that “adding an untested question on
citizenship status at this late point in the decennial planning process would put the accuracy of
the enumeration and success of the census in all communities at grave risk.”110 In March 2018,
before Ross’s formal announcement of his decision, VRA experts from outside of the
government likewise informed Secretary Ross that DOJ’s statements were “false” because “a
mandatory question on citizenship ha[d] never been necessary” to enforce the VRA.111
64. Having long decided on his course of action, Secretary Ross systematically
disregarded these experts’ concerns. He also chose to withhold key context and information
from the Census Bureau, including the fact that he and his aides had been determined to add a
citizenship question since early 2017. As the District Court for the Southern District of New
108
Memorandum from John Abowd, Chief Scientist, Census Bureau, to Secretary Wilbur
L. Ross, Jr., Dep’t of Com. (Jan. 19, 2018), https://tinyurl.com/ryplsoo, appended as Exhibit
RR; Memorandum from John Abowd, Chief Scientist, Census Bureau, to Secretary Wilbur L.
Ross, Jr., Dep’t of Com. (Mar. 1, 2018), https://tinyurl.com/vcg2qbk, appended as Exhibit SS.
109
Id.
110
Letter from Former Census Bureau Directors to Secretary Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Dep’t
of Com., 1 (Jan. 26, 2018), https://perma.cc/9E3J-MAM4, appended as Exhibit TT.
111
Letter from Constitutional Accountability Center, et al., to Secretary Wilbur L. Ross,
Jr., Dep’t of Com., at 2 (Mar. 22, 2018), https://perma.cc/A3UU-B95Y, appended as Exhibit
UU.
28
York later found, “the degree to which the origins of the decision were kept from those who
worked hard to promptly evaluate DOJ’s request was unusual and noteworthy.”112
B. Secretary Ross and Commerce Department Staff Repeatedly Misled the

Public, Congress, and the Courts
65. On March 26, 2018, Secretary Ross issued a memorandum announcing that the
2020 Census questionnaire would include a question on citizenship. In that memorandum,
Secretary Ross stated falsely that consideration of whether to add the citizenship question began
with receipt of the Gary Letter in December 2017 and that the decision to add the question was
made because of, and in response to, DOJ’s articulation of a need to enforce the Voting Rights
Act.113
66. In fact, Secretary Ross decided to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census
long before—and for reasons that had nothing to do with—DOJ’s letter concerning the VRA. As
the Supreme Court concluded, the VRA rationale was “contrived,” a pretextual “distraction”
intended to justify a decision that Secretary Ross had already made for other reasons. 114
67. That Secretary Ross made the decision to add a citizenship question long before
he received the Gary Letter is evident not only from the foregoing sequence of events but also
from specific correspondence between Secretary Ross and Commerce Department staff. For
example, as early as May 2017, Secretary Ross expressed frustration about the failure of his staff
112
New York v. U.S. Dep’t of Com., 351 F. Supp. 3d at 567.
113
Memorandum from Secretary Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Dep’t of Com., to Karen Dunn
Kelley, Under Secretary for Economic Affairs, Dep’t of Com., Reinstatement of a Citizenship
Question on the 2020 Decennial Census Questionnaire (Mar. 26, 2018), https://perma.cc/2XDF-
Q7E8, appended as Exhibit A.
114
Dep’t of Com. v. New York, 139 S. Ct. at 2575–76; see New York v. U.S. Dep’t of
Com., 351 F. Supp. 3d at 570 (“Those efforts make clear that the goal of Secretary Ross and his
aides was to launder their request through another agency—that is, to obtain cover for a decision
that they had already made—and that the reasons underlying any request from another agency
were secondary, if not irrelevant.”).
29
to implement his decision, which he described even then as “months old.”115 All of Mr.
Comstock’s subsequent work to obtain a formal request from another agency simply represented
efforts to execute the Secretary’s decision and obscure its actual rationale—in Mr. Comstock’s
own words, to “get [the citizenship question] in place” by “get[ting] [DOJ] to request” that it be
included.116 Mr. Comstock knew as early as August 9, 2017, that “the [citizenship question]
issue [would] go to the Supreme Court,” and therefore emphasized in an email to Secretary Ross
the need to “be diligent in preparing the administrative record.”117 As the District Court for the
Southern District of New York observed, “the only reason to believe that ‘the issue’ would
definitely ‘go to the Supreme Court’ was if Secretary Ross had decided to add the question.”118
68. Nevertheless, Secretary Ross and other Commerce Department officials repeated
the same false narrative again and again over the course of the following year to the public, to
Congress, and to the courts.
69. At a March 20, 2018, hearing before a House subcommittee, when asked if “the
President or anyone else in the White House [had] directed [him] to add this or a similar question
115
Off. of Pol’y and Strategic Plan., and Ellen Herbst, Chief Financial Officer, Dep’t of Com.
(May 2, 2017, 10:04 AM), https://perma.cc/U6KU-NBEM?type=image, appended as Exhibit
W.
116
to Secretary Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Dep’t of Com. and Ellen Herbst, Chief Financial Officer, Dep’t
of Com. (May 2, 2017, 2:19 PM), appended as Exhibit H.
117
to Secretary Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Dep’t of Com. (Aug. 9, 2017, 10:24 AM),
https://perma.cc/SRG9-FD4W?type=image, appended as Exhibit BB.
118
30
to the 2020 Census,” Secretary Ross falsely testified that the Commerce Department was
“responding solely to the Department of Justice’s request.”119
70. Later in the same hearing, when asked if “the President or anyone in the White
House discussed with you or anyone on your team about adding this citizenship question,”
Secretary Ross answered, “I am not aware of any such [discussion]”120—even though Secretary
Ross himself had spoken with Senior White House advisor Steve Bannon about the issue in April
2017.
71. On March 22, 2018, Secretary Ross again provided false testimony before a
different House committee. When asked “whether the Department of Commerce plans to
include the citizenship question in the 2020 Census,” Secretary Ross responded that the
“Department of Justice, as you know, initiated the request for inclusion of the citizenship
question” on the Census form.121
72. Once again, on May 10, 2018, before a Senate subcommittee, Secretary Ross
falsely testified that DOJ had initiated the request. Senator Patrick Leahy questioned whether a
citizenship question was actually “necessary to enforce the Voting Rights Act.” He asked
Secretary Ross: “Why this sudden interest in that when the department that’s supposed to
119
Hearing Before the H. Appropriations Subcomm. on Com., Justice, Science, & Related
Agencies: FY19 Budget – Department of Commerce, 115th Cong. 14–15 (Mar. 20, 2018),
webcast available at https://tinyurl.com/rnzty5f; excerpt appended as Exhibit C (emphasis
added); New York v. U.S. Dep’t of Com., 351 F. Supp. 3d at 571–72 (finding that Ross’s
testimony to Congress was an attempt to “avoid disclosure of, if not conceal, the real timing and
reasons for the decision to add the citizenship question”) (internal citations omitted).
120
Id. at 546.
121
115th Cong. 51 (Mar. 22, 2018), https://perma.cc/Y3H3-F8MA, excerpt appended as Exhibit B.
31
enforce violations doesn’t see any problems?” Secretary Ross responded: “Well, the Justice
Department is the one who made the request of us.”122
73. The Commerce Department continued to advance this false account when, in
April 2018, dozens of plaintiffs sued in the Southern District of New York to challenge the
decision to add the citizenship question.123
74. As required in litigation alleging violations of the Administrative Procedure
Act,124 the Commerce Department filed with the Court an Administrative Record that purported
to contain the materials Secretary Ross considered in making his decision. That Administrative
Record contained only the Gary Letter, various analyses of that request by the Census Bureau,
and Secretary Ross’s March 26, 2018, memorandum.125 It contained no hint that the Secretary
had considered, much less decided on, the addition of the citizenship question months before
DOJ made its request.126
75. Only at DOJ’s “urging” did the Commerce Department thereafter submit to the
Court more information that began to reveal the true course of events.127
76. On June 21, 2018, “to provide further background and context regarding”
Secretary Ross’s decision, the Commerce Department added to the Administrative Record a one-
122
Hearing Before Sen. Comm. on Appropriations, Subcomm. on Commerce, Justice, and
Science and Related Agencies on FY 2019 Funding Request for the Com. Dep’t, 115th Cong.
2018 WL 2179074, 26–27 (May 10, 2018), excerpt appended as Exhibit VV.
123
Hansi Lo Wang, “More than 2 Dozen States, Cities Sue to Block Census Citizenship
Question,” NPR (Apr. 3, 2018), https://perma.cc/JST2-L7RP.
124
See, e.g., Citizens to Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe, 401 U.S. 402, 419–20 (1971).
125
New York v. U.S. Dep’t of Com., 351 F. Supp. 3d at 530–47.
126
See id. at 547–48.
127
Dep’t of Com. v. New York, 139 S. Ct. at 2564.
32
page “Supplemental Memorandum” signed by Secretary Ross himself.128 In the Supplemental
Memorandum, Secretary Ross acknowledged that “[s]oon after [his] appointment as Secretary of
Commerce,” he had begun taking steps “to reinstate a citizenship question.”129 He also admitted
that “other senior Administration officials” (whom he did not name) “had previously raised” the
issue.130 He continued: “My staff and I thought reinstating a citizenship question could be
warranted, and we had various discussions with other governmental officials about reinstating a
citizenship question to the Census.”131 Secretary Ross further stated that “[a]s part of that
deliberative process,” he and his staff had “inquired whether the Department of Justice … would
support, and if so would request, inclusion of a citizenship question as consistent with and useful
for enforcement of” the VRA.132 According to the Secretary, DOJ “formally” requested
reinstatement of the citizenship question after that inquiry.133
77. The District Court then ordered extra-record discovery, which forced the
production of evidence that “reveals a very different set of events from the one described in the
initial Administrative Record, the [March 2018] Ross Memo, and Secretary Ross’s congressional
testimony.”134 In fact, as the court explained, the new information confirmed that “Secretary
Ross’s first version of events, set forth in the initial Administrative Record, the Ross Memo, and
his congressional testimony, was materially inaccurate.”135
128
129
Id. at 548.
130
Id.
131
Id. (internal quotation marks omitted)
132
Id. (emphasis omitted).
133
Dep’t of Com. v. New York, 139 S. Ct. at 2564.
134
135
Id. at 547 (emphasis added).
33
78. The District Court, in January 2019, concluded that the record constituted “a
strong showing of bad faith” and “improper behavior” by Secretary Ross and his staff,136 noting
“the sheer number of ways in which Secretary Ross and his aides tried to avoid disclosure of, if
not conceal, the real timing and the real reasons for the decision.”137 That record, the District
Court concluded, rebutted the presumption of regularity that usually applies to Executive Branch
conduct.138 The District Court inferred “from the various ways in which Secretary Ross and his
aides acted like people with something to hide that they did have something to hide.”139
79. Following the District Court’s decision, Secretary Ross testified before the
Committee on March 14, 2019. When Chairman Cummings asked Secretary Ross to clarify
whether his “interest in the citizenship question” related to “counting undocumented immigrants
for apportionment purposes,” Secretary Ross testified, “No, sir, it did not.”140 He reiterated that
the Commerce Department and Census Bureau “were responding to” DOJ’s request when they
decided to add the citizenship question.141
80. The Supreme Court endorsed the District Court’s finding of Secretary Ross’s bad
faith in June 2019. Noting that inquiry into “the mental processes of administrative
decisionmakers” is permitted only upon a “strong showing of bad faith or improper behavior,”
the Supreme Court concluded that, although the District Court’s order permitting “extra-record
136
Id. at 662.
137
Id. at 571.
138
Id. at 662.
139
Id.
140
Reform, 116th Cong. 15 (Mar. 14, 2019), https://perma.cc/WL25-NTHU, excerpts appended as
Exhibit S.
141
Id.
34
discovery” had been “premature,” the court was “ultimately justified” in invoking that exception
in light of the information that emerged.142
81. Significantly, President Trump later confirmed that the Supreme Court was
correct in concluding that the VRA rationale was contrived and pretextual. When asked the
“reason … for trying to get a citizenship question on the census,” President Trump said nothing
about the VRA. Instead, directly contradicting Secretary Ross’s testimony to the Committee, he
pointed to Congressional districting: “You need it for Congress, for districting. You need it for
appropriations. Where are the funds going? How many people are there? Are they citizens?
Are they not citizens?”143
C. Defendants Have Obstructed the Committee’s Investigation and Have

Refused to Comply with Valid Committee Subpoenas
1. The Commerce Department Has Refused to Produce Key Documents

Required by the Ross Subpoena
82. On January 8, 2019, the Committee renewed Rep. Cummings’s previous request
for documents from the Commerce Department regarding the addition of the citizenship
question.144 The request targeted several relevant categories of documents, including
communications regarding the Census Bureau’s concerns, analyses of the impact of the
citizenship question, communications with outside and internal parties on the subject of the
citizenship question, and documents relating to the budget and timing of the 2020 Census. As
142
Dep’t of Com. v. New York, 139 S. Ct. at 2573–74.
143
Remarks by President Trump Before Marine One Departure (July 5, 2019),
https://perma.cc/QK6V-833H, appended as Exhibit WW.
144
See supra n. 9.
35
part of that request, Chairman Cummings also asked for responses to several written questions
and requested that Secretary Ross testify before the Committee on February 12, 2019.145
83. The Commerce Department did not produce any documents by the requested
return date of January 22, 2019. The Commerce Department sent a preliminary, incomplete
production on January 29, 2019.146 This production and subsequent productions primarily
consisted of documents that were already publicly available, heavily redacted, or non-responsive.
The Commerce Department did not provide complete responses to the Committee’s written
questions.
84. After discussions with the Commerce Department, the Committee agreed to
reschedule the Secretary’s testimony for March 14, 2019.147
85. On March 5, 2019, the Commerce Department sent a letter seeking to postpone
the Secretary’s previously agreed-upon testimony before the Committee. The letter requested
that the Committee postpone the hearing until the end of April—by more than six weeks—so
that Secretary Ross could have additional time to prepare his testimony and to produce
documents.148
145
Letter from Chairman Elijah E. Cummings, Comm. on Oversight and Reform, to
Secretary Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Dep’t of Com. (Jan. 8, 2019), https://perma.cc/9V2P-3JN4,
appended as Exhibit XX.
146
See Letter from Michael Platt, Jr., Assistant Secretary for Legislative and
Intergovernmental Affairs, Dep’t of Com., to Chairman Elijah E. Cummings, Comm. on
Oversight and Reform (Jan. 29, 2019), https://perma.cc/3UA5-LE4D, appended as Exhibit YY.
147
Press Release, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to Testify Before Oversight
Committee, Comm. on Oversight and Reform (Jan. 22, 2019), https://perma.cc/JMZ2-2KAW,
appended as Exhibit ZZ.
148
Letter from Michael Platt Jr., Assistant Secretary for Legislative and
Oversight and Reform, 3 (Mar. 5, 2019), https://perma.cc/7C38-A8CZ, appended as Exhibit
AAA.
36
86. Chairman Cummings responded on March 6, stating that the Secretary had
already had nine weeks since the initial invitation, so the hearing would remain on March 14. In
an effort to accommodate the Commerce Department’s concerns, however, Chairman Cummings
agreed to the Secretary’s requests that the scope of the hearing be limited, and the Committee
prioritized one set of documents to be produced prior to the hearing: “All communications
between or among officials from the Department of Commerce, the Census Bureau, and any
other office or entity inside or outside of the government regarding the addition of a citizenship
question.” The Committee emphasized that these documents were “key to [its] understanding of
the communications around the addition of the citizenship question,” and that “the Committee
must receive [them] in unredacted form.” Chairman Cummings also warned Secretary Ross “the
existence of separate civil litigation is not a valid basis to withhold these documents from the
Committee.”149
87. The Commerce Department subsequently produced some additional documents in
response to the Committee’s prioritization request but did so with significant redactions. Among
the bases for the redactions cited were the attorney-client privilege, attorney work product
protections, and “the confidentiality of deliberative and pre-decisional communications among
Executive Branch officials.”150
88. On March 7, Secretary Ross confirmed he would appear to testify on March 14
“to answer the Committee on Oversight and Reform’s … questions on the preparations for the
149
Secretary Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Dep’t of Com. (Mar. 6, 2019), 3, https://perma.cc/Z9KZ-9Q78,
appended as Exhibit BBB.
150
Letter from Ross Branson, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Legislative and
Oversight and Reform (Mar. 19, 2019), 1, https://perma.cc/L4FJ-HC9Z, appended as Exhibit
CCC.
37
2020 Census and the addition of the citizenship question.”151 He did not indicate that any
documents or information would be withheld.
89. At the March 14 hearing, despite having agreed in advance to answer the
Committee’s questions, Secretary Ross refused to provide key information or priority documents
requested by the Committee, stating: “I will certainly address the question to my staff and to my
counsel,” but that, “to the degree that this is involved in pending litigation, there may be
problems.” At that point, Chairman Cummings offered Secretary Ross an additional five days to
“consult with your lawyers” and “produce all of the priority documents this committee has
requested.” Chairman Cummings explained, however, that the Committee would not accept any
argument based on ongoing litigation and that if Secretary Ross did not comply, the Committee
would have no choice but to consider issuing a subpoena for documents.152
90. The next day, Committee staff followed up with the Commerce Department to
offer additional accommodations. In an email to Commerce Department staff, Committee staff
provided a further narrowed list of 11 priority documents within the Committee’s previously
identified set of priority documents and asked for their production, without redactions, by
March 19, 2019.153
91. The 11 documents were carefully selected to further the Committee’s legislative,
investigative, and oversight interests with the least possible burden on the Commerce
151
Letter from Secretary Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Dep’t of Com., to Chairman Elijah E.
Cummings, Comm. on Oversight and Reform (Mar. 7, 2019), https://perma.cc/QC6L-K389,
appended as Exhibit DDD.
152
Reform, 116th Cong. 90 (Mar. 14, 2019), https://perma.cc/WL25-NTHU, excerpts appended as
Exhibit S.
153
Email from Staff, Comm. on Oversight and Reform, to Staff, Dep’t of Com.,
“Oversight Committee requests” (Mar. 15, 2019, 6:05 PM), appended as Exhibit EEE.
38
Department. They included (1) the Uthmeier Memorandum; (2) a set of eight email chains
predating the Gary Letter—the May 2 Emails, the August Emails, the September 1 Emails, and
the September 7 Emails—that reflected internal communications by high-level Commerce
Department officials regarding the decision to add a citizenship question; (3) an email chain in
which Commerce officials and White House officials discuss “notifying Congress on the DOJ
request” (“December Emails”); and (4) an email chain between high-level Commerce
Department officials regarding memoranda on the citizenship question, written in the weeks
before Secretary Ross’s public announcement of the citizenship question (“February 2018
Emails”).
92. On March 19, 2019, the Commerce Department replied that it did not have access
to the Uthmeier Memorandum, asserted that it had produced 10 of the 11 documents, and stated
that it had withheld an attachment to one of the August Emails on the basis of attorney-client
privilege.154 The letter did not acknowledge that the 10 documents were significantly redacted,
nor did it clarify how the Commerce Department could have no electronic or other copies of the
Uthmeier Memorandum, which Commerce Department officials had drafted in the first instance.
93. On March 26, 2019, the Commerce Department demanded that the Committee
identify “specific, particularized information” needs for each of the requested priority documents
and for transcribed interviews that had been requested separately.155 Although the Committee is
154
Intergovernmental Affairs, to Chairman Elijah E. Cummings, Comm. on Oversight and Reform
(Mar. 19, 2019), https://perma.cc/L4FJ-HC9Z, appended as Exhibit CCC.
155
Oversight and Reform (Mar. 26, 2019), https://perma.cc/7DZM-2ZWB, appended as Exhibit
FFF. In addition to its document requests, the Committee requested transcribed interviews with
Commerce Department officials who played critical roles in the addition of the citizenship
question: Earl Comstock, Peter Davidson, and James Uthmeier. See Email from Staff, Comm.
39
under no obligation to meet such a demand, Chairman Cummings replied with a detailed
description of the Committee’s needs.156 The Commerce Department continued to refuse to
produce the unredacted priority documents, despite repeated follow-up by Committee staff.
94. On April 2, 2019, the Committee voted on a bipartisan basis to authorize the Ross
Subpoena to compel production of key documents, including the 11 previously identified key
documents and one set of documents from the original request of January 8, 2019. The latter set
of documents encompassed internal and external communications between January 20 and
December 12, 2017, regarding the addition of the citizenship question.157
95. Following the issuance of the Ross Subpoena, the Commerce Department did
produce additional documents but failed to produce an unredacted copy of any of the 11 key
on Oversight and Reform, to Staff, Dep’t of Com., “RE: Oversight Committee requests” (Mar.
20, 2019, 7:25 PM), appended as Exhibit GGG; Press Release, Committee Seeks Transcribed
Interviews in Interior and Census Investigations, Comm. on Oversight and Reform (May 7,
2019), https://perma.cc/CT44-WQ88, appended as Exhibit HHH. The Commerce Department
initially refused to make them available for interviews, but agreed to make them available on
June 4, 2019, after the Committee scheduled a vote to authorize subpoenas for their testimony.
See Report, Together with Minority and Supplemental Views, A resolution recommending that
the House of Representatives find William P. Barr, Attorney General of the United States, and
Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Secretary of Commerce, in Contempt of Congress for Refusal to Comply with
Subpoenas Duly Issued by the Committee on Oversight and Reform, 116th Cong. (June 24,
2019), 23–24 (hereinafter “Contempt Report”), appended as Exhibit III. During the transcribed
interviews, the Commerce Department’s counsel instructed the witnesses not to answer hundreds
of the Committee’s substantive questions. See Memorandum from Majority Staff, Comm. on
Oversight and Reform, to Members, Comm. on Oversight and Reform, Re: Interview of James
Uthmeier on Addition of Citizenship Question to Census, 1, 3–4 (June 25, 2019),
https://perma.cc/3YGA-E2CY, appended as Exhibit HH; Transcript, Interview with Peter
Davidson, Dep’t of Com. (June 18, 2019), https://perma.cc/8VLB-8JQL; Transcript, Interview
with Earl Comstock, Dep’t of Com. (June 21, 2019), https://perma.cc/K4ZJ-XZKC.
156
Secretary Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Dep’t of Com. (Mar. 29, 2019), https://perma.cc/T4HF-7AVA,
appended as Exhibit JJJ.
157
See Press Release, Committee Approves Subpoenas in Security Clearance and Census
Investigations, Comm. on Oversight and Reform (Apr. 2, 2019), https://perma.cc/V9J4-
R8UT?type=image, appended as Exhibit KKK. The Ross Subpoena is appended as Exhibit
LLL to this Complaint.
40
documents. Many of the documents it did produce were heavily redacted, did not include
attachments, or were not responsive to the Ross Subpoena.
96. On May 8, 2019, Chairman Cummings again wrote to Secretary Ross, this time
requesting a personal meeting to discuss the Commerce Department’s actions:
I am writing to request a meeting to discuss the Department’s

refusal to produce documents pursuant to a subpoena authorized by
the Committee on a bipartisan basis regarding your decision to add
a citizenship question to the 2020 Census. I would like to meet
with you in person, preferably in the next two weeks, to ensure that
you are fully apprised of the actions of your staff and to determine
whether there is any way to resolve this impasse before initiating
potential enforcement action.158
97. Secretary Ross responded on May 20, 2019, declining to meet with Chairman
Cummings. Instead, he reiterated the Commerce Department’s already fulfilled demand for the
“particularized legislative need” for each of the documents and reasserted vague claims of
Executive Branch confidentiality interests (see supra ¶ 93).159
98. Committee staff spoke to Commerce Department staff on May 31, 2019, to seek a
resolution of these issues. Commerce Department staff did not commit to providing any of the
key unredacted documents. Committee staff warned that if the Commerce Department did not
cooperate with the investigation, the Committee would consider taking further action.
99. On June 3, 2019, the Committee notified Secretary Ross that it was scheduling a
vote to hold him in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with the Ross Subpoena. The
158
Secretary Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Dep’t of Com. (May 8, 2019), https://perma.cc/VH2X-FJZQ,
appended as Exhibit MMM.
159
Letter from Wilbur L. Ross Jr., Secretary of Commerce, to the Honorable Elijah E.
Cummings, U.S. House of Representatives (May 20, 2019), https://perma.cc/U77L-AH4S,
appended as Exhibit NNN. While the Committee has described its need for these documents in
detail, it was not required to do so.
41
Committee offered to postpone the vote if the 11 priority documents identified in Item 1 of the
Ross Subpoena were produced without redactions by June 6, 2019.160
100. The Commerce Department produced no additional documents by the
Committee’s June 6 deadline. In a letter to the Committee that evening, the Commerce
Department claimed that holding Secretary Ross in contempt was “premature” but refused to
provide unredacted copies of any of the key documents required by the Ross Subpoena and
offered no accommodation with respect to those documents.161 As described below, see infra ¶
120, the Commerce Department later notified the Committee, on the day of the Committee’s
contempt vote, that the President had asserted a blanket claim of Executive Privilege over the
remaining documents, including “an additional, significant number of documents responsive to
the Committee’s request” that the Commerce Department acknowledged it possessed and had
been “prepared to provide” to the Committee.162 The Commerce Department has made no
additional productions in response to the Ross Subpoena since the Committee’s June 12, 2019,
contempt vote. 163
160
Secretary Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Dep’t of Com. (June 3, 2019), https://perma.cc/65J6-US8A,
appended as Exhibit OOO.
161
Letter from Charles Kolo Rathburn, Performing the Duties of the Assistant Secretary
for Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs, Dep’t of Com., to Chairman Elijah E. Cummings,
Comm. on Oversight and Reform (June 6, 2019), https://perma.cc/Y27K-WJHC, appended as
Exhibit PPP.
162
Comm. on Oversight and Reform (June 12, 2019), https://perma.cc/9MB7-6TL9, appended as
Exhibit QQQ.
163
42
2. DOJ Has Refused to Produce Key Documents Required by the Barr

Subpoena
101. Like the Commerce Department, DOJ has refused to produce documents in
response to document requests, and ultimately a Subpoena, from the Committee.164
102. In connection with the Committee’s investigation, Chairman Cummings renewed
his earlier request for documents from DOJ on February 12, 2019.165 Among other categories of
documents, the Committee’s letter requested “[a]ll documents and communications within the
Department of Justice and with outside entities regarding the request to add a citizenship
question to the census, including but not limited to the White House, the Commerce Department,
the Republican National Committee, the Trump Campaign, or Members of Congress.”166 The
Committee understood that this request would encompass drafts of the Gary Letter.
103. In the weeks that followed, the Committee worked to accommodate DOJ and
thereby to facilitate the production. On March 1, the Committee identified a subset of “high-
priority” documents to be produced first, including an unredacted copy of the Uthmeier
Memorandum and the communications of several Commerce Department and DOJ officials
regarding the citizenship question.167
104. DOJ did not provide the Uthmeier Memorandum or unredacted copies of the other
priority documents. Instead, DOJ produced court filings and other documents relating to its
164
The Barr Subpoena demands documents that partially overlap with those demanded by
the Ross Subpoena, including the Uthmeier Memorandum and communications between DOJ
and the Commerce Department. Barr Subpoena, appended as Exhibit RRR.
165
See supra n. 9.
166
Matthew Whitaker, Acting Att’y Gen., Dep’t of Justice (Feb. 12, 2019), 2,
https://perma.cc/5MK3-DQKQ, appended as Exhibit SSS.
167
Email from Staff, Comm. on Oversight and Reform, to Staff, Dep’t of Justice, “RE:
Letter from Chairman Elijah E. Cummings, House Committee on Oversight and Reform” (Mar.
1, 2019 7:13 PM), appended as Exhibit TTT.
43
ongoing litigation, including documents that were heavily redacted and already largely publicly
available.168
105. On March 20, 2019, Committee staff contacted DOJ staff and again requested the
production of the priority documents. Committee staff noted that if DOJ could not commit to
producing them, “the Committee will have no choice but to consider taking additional steps to
ensure compliance.”169 DOJ responded on March 22, 2019, stating only that it would “continue
to reevaluate” the Committee’s requests.170
106. On April 2, 2019, Chairman Cummings sent a letter to DOJ explaining that the
Supreme Court has made clear that ongoing litigation does not preclude Congress from
investigating an issue.171
107. Later that day, after the Committee took a bipartisan vote in support of the
Chairman compelling the production of these documents, the Chairman issued the Barr
Subpoena. The Barr Subpoena reiterated the Committee’s demand for the Uthmeier
Memorandum and its February 12, 2019 request for “[a]ll documents and communications …
within the Department of Justice and with outside entities regarding the request to add a
168
See Contempt Report, 23, appended as Exhibit III.
169
Email from Staff, Comm. on Oversight and Reform, to Staff, Dep’t of Justice, “RE:
Transcribed Interview Follow Up” (Mar. 20, 2019, 7:25 PM), appended as Exhibit UUU.
170
Email from Staff, Dep’t of Justice, to Staff, Comm. on Oversight and Reform, “RE:
Transcribed Interview Follow Up” (Mar. 22, 2019, 3:27 PM), appended as Exhibit VVV.
171
Stephen E. Boyd, Assistant Att’y Gen., Dep’t of Justice (Apr. 2, 2019), https://perma.cc/PH7Q-
XNW9 (citing Hutcheson v. United States, 369 U.S. 599, 618 (1962)), appended as Exhibit
WWW.
44
citizenship question.” In a further accommodation, the Committee narrowed the latter request to
the time frame of January 20, 2017, to December 12, 2017.172
108. Since that time, DOJ has produced some documents, but many are heavily
redacted, do not include attachments, or are not responsive to the Barr Subpoena. Of particular
note, DOJ has refused to produce the Uthmeier Memorandum or drafts of the Gary Letter,
despite the clear importance of these documents to the Committee’s investigation and
understanding of how the Commerce Department and DOJ developed a false rationale to justify
the addition of the citizenship question.
109. In addition, DOJ has not produced privilege logs. Instead, the cover letters
accompanying DOJ’s productions all contain the same broad and general disclaimers, stating that
DOJ “may have made redactions relating to ongoing investigations, enforcement activities, and
certain law enforcement operations, methods or techniques,” and “may have made limited
redactions to preserve the deliberative, attorney-client, and/or attorney-work product
protections.”173
110. On June 3, 2019, the Committee notified Attorney General Barr that it was
scheduling a vote to hold him in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with the Barr
Subpoena. The Committee offered to postpone the vote if a subset of the documents identified in
172
Press Release, Committee Approves Subpoenas in Security Clearance and Census
R8UT?type=image, appended as Exhibit KKK. The Barr Subpoena is appended as Exhibit
RRR.
173
See, e.g., Letter from Stephen E. Boyd, Assistant Att’y Gen., Dep’t of Justice, to
Chairman Elijah E. Cummings, Comm. on Oversight and Reform (Apr. 11, 2019),
https://perma.cc/R2ZF-FMHF, appended as Exhibit XXX.
45
the Barr Subpoena—in particular, the Uthmeier Memorandum and all drafts of the Gary Letter—
was produced by June 6, 2019.174
111. On June 6, DOJ sent a letter to the Committee that called a contempt vote
“premature” but refused to produce the documents identified in the Barr Subpoena and did not
offer any accommodation with respect to those documents.175 DOJ’s letter asserted that drafts of
the Gary Letter were “appropriately withheld based on the deliberative process privilege,” and,
repeating the position DOJ had taken in civil litigation, that the Uthmeier Memorandum was
“appropriately withheld on attorney-client privilege grounds.”176 The letter also noted that DOJ
had “identified tens of thousands more responsive pages that it [was] in the process of
producing” and promised to “continue to produce documents to the Committee as
appropriate.”177 DOJ has since made no further productions despite its admission that it has
identified additional responsive documents.
3. The Attorney General Ordered a Subordinate to Defy the

Committee’s Deposition Subpoena
112. On May 18, 2018, then-Acting Assistant Attorney General John Gore testified at
a Committee hearing. Citing “pending litigation, the potential effect of public statements on
ongoing court cases and the Department’s litigation constraints,” Mr. Gore refused to disclose
174
Attorney General William P. Barr, Dep’t of Justice, 6 (June 3, 2019), https://perma.cc/3PSZ-
C4ZR, appended as Exhibit YYY.
175
Elijah E. Cummings, Comm. on Oversight and Reform, 2 (June 6, 2019),
https://perma.cc/Q5HG-2R5A, appended as Exhibit J.
176
Id.
177
Id.
46
any information beyond what was already included in the Gary Letter or “other publicly
available information.”178
113. During a transcribed interview with Committee staff on March 7, 2019, DOJ
counsel directed Mr. Gore not to answer any questions about the content of conversations or
documents relating to the citizenship question. DOJ counsel cited “ongoing litigation” and
“other executive branch confidentiality interests” as the basis for instructing Mr. Gore not to
answer the Committee’s questions. In total, Mr. Gore refused to answer more than 150 questions
asked by Committee staff.179
114. On April 2, 2019, following a bipartisan vote of the Committee, the Chairman
issued a subpoena compelling Mr. Gore to testify.180 In response, DOJ wrote to the Committee
that Attorney General Barr had personally directed Mr. Gore not to comply with the subpoena
and not to appear for the deposition because of the Committee’s longstanding deposition rule
prohibiting agency counsel from attending—a rule that was adopted unanimously by the
Committee in January 2019 and which has been in place for more than a decade under both
Republican and Democratic Chairmen. During that period, no Executive Branch official or
178
Hearing Before H. Comm. on Oversight and Gov’t Reform: Progress Report on the
2020 Census, 115th Cong., 2–3 (May 18, 2018), webcast available at
https://tinyurl.com/t6aw6r8, excerpt appended as Exhibit ZZZ. Mr. Gore further explained:
“Pending litigation is a limitation in these circumstances. Other limitations include the need for
the Department of Justice to facilitate open and robust discussion before decisions are made. For
that reason, the department does not talk about deliberations or privileged conversations that
might happen in an attorney-client context.” Id. at 5.
179
Transcript, Interview with John M. Gore, Comm. on Oversight and Reform, 8 (Mar. 7,
2019), https://perma.cc/BXT5-KF8C; see also Memorandum from Majority Staff, Comm. on
Oversight and Reform, to Members, Comm. on Oversight and Reform, Re: Supplemental Memo
on Transcribed Interview with John Gore Regarding Addition of Citizenship Question to Census
(Mar. 14, 2019), https://perma.cc/KJP5-9538, appended as Exhibit AAAA.
180
Press Release, Committee Approves Subpoenas in Security Clearance and Census
R8UT?type=image, appended as Exhibit KKK.
47
private sector individual has ever refused to attend a deposition on these grounds,181 and some of
the most senior aides to previous Presidents have attended depositions without agency
counsel.182 DOJ nevertheless claimed that the bipartisan rule “unconstitutionally encroaches on
fundamental Executive Branch interests.” DOJ concluded: “As a result, the Attorney General
has determined that Mr. Gore will not appear at the April 11 deposition unless a Department
representative may accompany him.”183
115. Despite extensive efforts by the Committee in the ensuing months to negotiate
with DOJ and accommodate its purported interests,184 Attorney General Barr refused to permit
Mr. Gore to testify and continued to instruct him to defy a congressional subpoena.185
116. This was but one instance among many in which DOJ or the Commerce
Department impeded interviews with Committee staff. Over the course of this investigation, the
Departments’ lawyers have directed witnesses not to answer hundreds of questions. DOJ and
181
Contempt Report, 25–26, appended as Exhibit III.
182
Memorandum, Committee Depositions in the House of Representatives:
Longstanding Republican and Democratic Practice of Excluding Agency Counsel, Comm. on
Oversight and Reform, 1 (Nov. 5, 2019), https://perma.cc/G68P-GK4H, appended as Exhibit
BBBB; see also id. at 5 (explaining that the rule is designed to ensure that Committees “are able
to depose witnesses in furtherance of [an] investigation without having in the room
representatives of the agency or office under investigation”).
183
Elijah E. Cummings, Comm. on Oversight and Reform, 3 (Apr. 9, 2019),
https://perma.cc/3AKZ-2EAY, appended as Exhibit I.
184
See, e.g., Letter from Chairman Elijah E. Cummings, Comm. on Oversight and
Reform, to Attorney General William P. Barr, Dep’t of Justice (Apr. 10, 2019) (offering to
accommodate DOJ’s interests by making a separate room available for DOJ counsel during the
deposition and permitting Mr. Gore or his counsel to request breaks to consult with DOJ
counsel), https://perma.cc/V9KA-8XTT, appended as Exhibit CCCC.
185
Elijah E. Cummings, Comm. on Oversight and Reform (Apr. 24, 2019), https://perma.cc/RWF3-
MPZR, appended as Exhibit DDDD; Letter from Stephen E. Boyd, Assistant Att’y Gen., Dep’t
of Justice, to Chairman Elijah E. Cummings, Comm. on Oversight and Reform (June 6, 2019),
48
Commerce Department witnesses have repeatedly refused to provide basic, non-privileged
information, including non-substantive information about which government officials were
involved in developing or discussing policies.186 In addition, the White House directed a non-
government witness to withhold basic information about his interactions with government
officials regarding the citizenship question.187
D. The House Held Defendants in Contempt and Authorized This Suit
117. On June 11, 2019, the evening before the scheduled date of the Committee’s
business meeting to consider the resolution holding Defendants Barr and Ross in contempt, and
while negotiations were ongoing, the Committee received a letter from Assistant Attorney
General Stephen E. Boyd stating: “In the face of [the Committee’s] threatened contempt vote,
the Attorney General is now compelled to request that the President invoke executive privilege
with respect to the materials subject to the subpoena to the Attorney General and the subpoena to
the Secretary of the Department of Commerce.” The letter requested that the Committee “hold
the subpoenas in abeyance and delay any vote on whether to recommend a citation of
contempt … pending the President’s determination of this question,” but it did not provide a
186
See generally, e.g., Transcript, Interview with John M. Gore, Comm. on Oversight and
Reform, (Mar. 7, 2019), https://perma.cc/BXT5-KF8C; Transcript, Interview of Gene Hamilton,
Comm. on Oversight and Reform (May 30, 2019), https://perma.cc/WB2Y-9EMU; Transcript,
Interview of James Uthmeier, Comm. on Oversight and Reform (June 11, 2019),
https://perma.cc/88AW-AB9W; Memorandum from Majority Staff, Comm. on Oversight and
Reform, to Members, Comm. on Oversight and Reform, Re: Interview of James Uthmeier on
Addition of Citizenship Question to Census, 1, 3–4 (June 25, 2019), https://perma.cc/3YGA-
E2CY, appended as Exhibit HH (summarizing Commerce Department counsel’s directions to
Mr. Uthmeier during his interview).
187
Transcript, Tel. Interview with Kris Kobach, Comm. on Oversight and Reform, 17–18
(June 3, 2019), https://perma.cc/3CNN-4FQA; see also Memorandum from Majority Staff,
Comm. on Oversight and Reform, to Members, Comm. on Oversight and Reform, Re: White
House Interference with Oversight Committee Interview of Kris Kobach, 4–5 (June 7, 2019),
https://perma.cc/GE57-U5Y7, appended as Exhibit P (summarizing White House’s instructions
to Kris Kobach regarding cooperation with the Committee).
49
timeline for such determinations or suggest that the process could be expedited in light of the
Committee’s needs. Mr. Boyd threatened that, should the Committee “proceed in spite of this
request … the Department will be obliged to advise that the President assert executive privilege
with respect to certain of the subpoenaed documents, and to make a protective assertion of
executive privilege over the remainder of the documents,” and would “be forced to reevaluate its
current production efforts in ongoing matters.” The letter did not offer to accommodate the
Committee’s requests for priority documents. Instead, it reiterated that a “subset of the
[subpoenaed] documents is protected from disclosure” by various privileges.188
118. At the time of this letter, Defendants were aware that the President, who had
previously vowed that his Administration would “fight all the subpoenas,”189 was unlikely to
accommodate Congressional interests.
119. Nevertheless, Chairman Cummings continued to seek accommodation. On the
same day he received the Boyd letter, Chairman Cummings wrote to Attorney General Barr to
point out that, “without making any recognizable counter-offer with respect to the documents
under subpoena,” the letter had “indicat[ed] that [DOJ] may stop producing responsive
documents over which even the Department concedes no privilege exists—and that the
Department may also withhold documents in other investigations.” The Chairman also
emphasized that the Committee had given DOJ months to respond to the Barr Subpoena and,
eight days before, had promised to postpone the vote if DOJ and the Commerce Department
began producing a small subset of high-priority documents. The Chairman explained that the
188
Elijah E. Cummings, Comm. on Oversight and Reform (June 11, 2019), https://perma.cc/D439-
FJZ9, appended as Exhibit EEEE.
189
Kevin Breuninger and Christina Wilkie, “Trump: ‘We’re fighting all the subpoenas’
from House Democrats,” CNBC (Apr. 24, 2019), https://perma.cc/43AY-AD3X.
50
Committee could not accept continued delay due to the Committee’s “responsibility under the
Constitution to conduct rigorous oversight of the Census.” But the Chairman offered to delay the
contempt vote for Attorney General Barr if he produced, on the following day, the Uthmeier
Memorandum and drafts of the Gary Letter, and further offered to delay the contempt vote for
Secretary Ross if he produced, on the following day, unredacted copies of the 11 priority
documents.190
120. On June 12, 2019, the day of the Committee’s meeting, the Committee received
follow-up letters from the Commerce Department and DOJ, both stating “that the President has
asserted executive privilege” over the subpoenaed documents.191 The letters both added that
until the Committee sought a contempt resolution, the Departments were “prepared to provide”
an additional, “significant” number of documents responsive to the Committee’s requests.192
DOJ’s letter attached a memorandum from Attorney General Barr to President Trump; this
memorandum included a new conclusion that all of the 11 priority documents, the Uthmeier
Memorandum, and drafts of the Gary Letter were subject to the deliberative process privilege. 193
190
Attorney General William P. Barr, Dep’t of Justice (June 11, 2019), https://perma.cc/EE4S-
96EM, appended as Exhibit FFFF.
191
H82P, appended as Exhibit K; Letter from Charles Kolo Rathburn, Performing the Duties of the
Assistant Secretary for Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs, Dep’t of Com., to Chairman
Elijah E. Cummings, Comm. on Oversight and Reform (June 12, 2019), https://perma.cc/9MB7-
6TL9, appended as Exhibit QQQ.
192
Id.
193
Letter from Attorney General William P. Barr, Dep’t of Justice, to President Donald
Trump (June 11, 2019), https://perma.cc/VF3J-S67M (enclosure), appended as Exhibit GGGG.
51
121. The Committee voted on June 12, 2019, on a bipartisan basis to recommend that
the House hold Defendants Ross and Barr in contempt of Congress.194
122. The Supreme Court announced its decision voiding the addition of the citizenship
question on June 27, 2019.195 But even after the Supreme Court ruled—and despite their
repeated insistence that their refusal to produce documents had been based on the unresolved
litigation—Secretary Ross and Attorney General Barr refused to produce the key documents
subpoenaed by the Committee.
123. After first implying that he would defy the Supreme Court’s order, President
Trump acquiesced on July 11, 2019, announcing that the Administration would comply with the
Supreme Court’s order and end attempts to add the citizenship question to the 2020 Census.196
124. President Trump nevertheless issued an Executive Order directing the Census
Bureau to collect citizenship data through other means. The Executive Order explained that
President Trump’s purpose in collecting the information is to allow “States to design State and
local legislative districts based on the population of voter-eligible citizens.”197 When
announcing the Executive Order, the President again explained that “[s]ome states may want to
194
See Comm. on Oversight and Reform, Resolution recommending that the House of
Representatives find William P. Barr, Attorney General of the United States, and Wilbur L. Ross,
Jr., Secretary of Commerce, in Contempt of Congress for Their Refusal to Comply with
Subpoenas Duly Issued by the Committee on Oversight and Reform, 116th Cong. (June 12,
2019), https://perma.cc/3J3J-SCUL, appended as Exhibit HHHH; 165 Cong. Rec. 98 (daily ed.
June 12, 2019), https://perma.cc/7Z6R-JS8M.
195
Dep’t of Com. v. New York, 139 S. Ct. 2551; see supra Section II(B).
196
Katie Rogers et al., “Trump Says He will Seek Citizenship Information From Existing
Federal Records, Not the Census,” N.Y. Times (July 11, 2019), https://perma.cc/S4ER-32VV.
197
Executive Order on Collecting Information about Citizenship Status in Connection
with the Decennial Census, The White House (July 11, 2019), https://perma.cc/D24K-JKDD,
appended as Exhibit IIII.
52
draw state and local legislative districts based upon the voter-eligible population”198—further
undermining Secretary Ross’s March 2019 testimony to Congress in which he insisted that he
had decided to add the question “solely” in response to DOJ’s request for assistance with VRA
enforcement.199
125. Two weeks after the Supreme Court decision, on July 11, 2019, Chairman
Cummings issued a statement: “I urge Attorney General Barr and Secretary Ross to change
course and produce the documents we have subpoenaed on a bipartisan basis, so the House is not
forced to hold them in contempt of Congress.”200 Neither Attorney General Barr nor Secretary
Ross took steps to comply with the Subpoenas.
126. On July 15, 2019, Committee staff reached out to DOJ and the Commerce
Department, hoping to resolve the dispute without a contempt vote of the full House.201
However, after DOJ and the Commerce Department refused to produce further documents or
even offer to produce further documents, the full House voted to hold Defendants Ross and Barr
in contempt on July 17, 2019.202
198
https://perma.cc/QK6V-833H, appended as Exhibit WW.
199
115th Cong. 51 (Mar. 22, 2018), https://perma.cc/Y3H3-F8MA, excerpt appended as Exhibit B;
see Hearing Before the H. Appropriations Subcomm. on Com., Justice, Science, & Related
Agencies: FY19 Budget – Department of Commerce, 115th Cong. 14–15 (Mar. 20, 2018),
webcast available at https://tinyurl.com/rnzty5f; excerpt appended as Exhibit C.
200
Press Release, House Schedules Floor Vote to Hold AG and Commerce Secretary in
Contempt, Comm. on Oversight and Reform (July 11, 2019), https://perma.cc/EF6C-U6UR,
appended as Exhibit JJJJ.
201
See Letter from Chairman Elijah E. Cummings, Comm. on Oversight and Reform, to
Attorney General William P. Barr, Dep’t of Justice and Secretary Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Dep’t of
Com. (July 23, 2019), https://perma.cc/B7SW-57RY, appended as Exhibit KKKK.
202
See 165 Cong. Rec. H5977 (daily ed. July 17, 2019), https://perma.cc/2R9V-NRBA.
53
127. On the same day, Secretary Ross and Attorney General Barr wrote directly to
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to express their opposition to the contempt resolution. Their
letter stated that DOJ, like the Commerce Department, had “intended to provide a significant
number of additional documents identified as responsive to the Committee’s subpoena” before
the Committee decided to pursue a contempt resolution.203 However, the letter did not offer to
produce any of the priority documents or make any other specific offer of accommodation.
128. Pursuant to her obligations under 2 U.S.C. § 194, Speaker Pelosi referred the
contempt resolution to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia for prosecution for
contempt of Congress.
129. Only one day after receiving the referral, the Department of Justice cited the
President’s nebulous assertion of Executive Privilege in declining to prosecute either Secretary
Ross or Attorney General Barr for contempt of Congress. On July 24, 2019, Deputy Attorney
General Jeffrey Rosen cited “[t]he Department of Justice’s long-standing position … that we will
not prosecute an official for contempt of Congress for declining to provide information subject to
a presidential assertion of executive privilege,” announcing that “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.”204
130. Defendants’ continued defiance of their legal obligations has resulted in an
impasse. They have indicated through their blanket, indiscriminate assertion of Executive
Privilege that they will make no further productions, regardless of whether any particular
203
Letter from Attorney General William P. Barr, Dep’t of Justice, and Secretary Wilbur
L. Ross, Jr., Dep’t of Com., to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House of Representatives (July 17, 2019),
https://perma.cc/V359-6XXV, appended as Exhibit L.
204
Letter from Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen, Dep’t of Justice, to Speaker
Nancy Pelosi, House of Representatives (July 24, 2019), https://perma.cc/G3YA-NFR9,
appended as Exhibit LLLL.
54
document is even plausibly subject to privilege. Since that “protective” privilege assertion,
Defendants have produced no additional documents in response to the Subpoenas, nor have they
conveyed anything further with respect to privilege determinations over the remaining
responsive documents. As a result of this impasse, the Committee has no choice but to seek
judicial enforcement of the Subpoenas.
E. The Committee Has Continued Its Investigation Following the Contempt

Vote and Uncovered Corroborating Information, Reinforcing the
Committee’s Concerns
131. The Commerce Department and DOJ have continued to obstruct the Committee’s
factfinding by refusing to honor the Subpoenas and by directing a witness not to appear.
Nevertheless, the Committee has pressed forward in its investigation and has uncovered new
information—including a number of documents relating to Mr. Neuman and Mr. Hofeller—that
heightens concerns about the integrity of the Census process under Secretary Ross.
132. The Committee sent a document request to the Executive Director of the Trump
Transition Team on June 18, 2019, seeking all Transition Team documents and communications
relating to the citizenship question, including those involving Mr. Hofeller, Mr. Kobach, Mr.
Hamilton, Mr. Neuman, and others.205
133. The Transition Team identified responsive documents prior to the July 2, 2019
deadline but did not produce any to the Committee. On July 8, the Transition Team informed
Committee staff that the documents had been sent to the White House Counsel’s Office for
review. More than a month later, the Transition Team indicated that White House review for
205
Letter from Chairman Elijah E. Cummings, Comm. on Oversight and Reform, to Ken
Nahigian, Trustee and Executive Director, Trump for America, Inc. (June 18, 2019),
https://perma.cc/ZZS8-CYMZ, appended as Exhibit MMMM.
55
“potential Executive Branch equities or confidentiality interests” was ongoing206—even though
the Committee’s request is limited to a period from before President Trump took office. Since
that time, none of the requested transition documents have been produced.
134. The Committee also sent a letter on June 18, 2019, to Mr. Neuman, requesting his
communications about the citizenship question with Mr. Hofeller and others.207 On July 2, 2019,
Mr. Neuman produced previously undisclosed documents to the Committee. These new
documents included direct communications about the citizenship question between Mr. Neuman,
Mr. Hofeller, and Mr. Hofeller’s business partner, the Republican National Committee’s
gerrymandering attorney Dale Oldham, as described in paragraphs 57 to 59.208
135. The Committee requested documents going back to January 2014 from Ms. Jones
at the Census Bureau, after news reports indicated that she had direct communications with Mr.
Hofeller as early as 2015.209
136. In response to that separate request, Ms. Jones and the Commerce Department
produced to the Committee a limited set of redacted emails from Ms. Jones’s official and
206
Email from Counsel for Statecraft PLLC, to Staff, Comm. on Oversight and Reform
(Aug. 14, 2019, 12:00 PM), appended as Exhibit NNNN.
207
Mark Neuman (June 18, 2019), https://perma.cc/4ADM-CRW6, appended as Exhibit OOOO.
208
Memorandum from Carolyn B. Maloney, Acting Chairwoman, Comm. on Oversight
and Reform, to Members, Comm. on Oversight and Reform, Re: Update on Investigation of
Census Citizenship Question Since House Held Attorney General Barr and Commerce Secretary
Ross in Contempt of Congress, 10–12 (Nov. 12, 2019), https://perma.cc/88XZ-YNAJ, appended
as Exhibit G; see also Jonathan Oosting, “Supreme Court rejects GOP delay bid in
gerrymandering lawsuit,” The Detroit News (Feb. 4, 2019), https://perma.cc/5QAS-A27F
(describing Dale Oldham coauthoring a memorandum on redistricting with Mr. Hofeller to help
the Republican party “make sure the Democrats cannot take [Republican 2010 election victories]
away from us in 2011 and 2012”).
209
Christa Jones, Chief of Staff, Off. of the Director, Census Bureau (June 18, 2019),
https://perma.cc/CH6W-3X9E, appended as Exhibit PPPP.
56
personal accounts, but these productions were incomplete and omitted any documents from
earlier than 2018, even though Ms. Jones had worked at the Census Bureau for many years and
her communications in 2015 with Mr. Hofeller had been the subject of public reporting.210
137. In a transcribed interview with Committee staff on July 31, 2019, Ms. Jones
explained that Mr. Hofeller and his partner, Mr. Oldham, had for years expressed interest in a
citizenship question to assist with “the Republican redistricting effort.”211
138. On July 24, 2019, the Committee’s Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil
Liberties held a hearing regarding preparations for the Census. In this hearing, which included
testimony from the director of the Census Bureau, the subcommittee inquired about the Bureau’s
ongoing efforts to gather citizenship data, its efforts to remediate damage to the accuracy of the
count of immigrant populations caused by the effort to add a citizenship question, its efforts to
communicate with the public regarding the confidentiality and permissible uses of census data,
and its failure to apply its full budget to remediate chronic undercounting among communities of
color.212
139. On September 20, 2019, the Committee sent another letter to Mr. Gore asking
whether, in light of changed circumstances and the Supreme Court’s decision, he was now
willing to comply with the subpoena for his testimony. The letter noted the importance of his
210
211
Transcribed Interview of Christa Jones, Comm. on Oversight and Reform, 18 (July 31,
2019), https://perma.cc/8UMP-82FA; see also supra n. 58.
212
Hearing Before the Comm. on Oversight and Reform, Subcomm. on Civil Rights and
Civil Liberties: Beyond the Citizenship Question: Repairing the Damage and Preparing to
Count “We the People” in 2020, 116th Cong., 3–7 (July 24, 2019), webcast available at
https://tinyurl.com/vzwm6oh, excerpt appended as Exhibit QQQQ.
57
testimony and explained that the Committee’s investigation is “urgent in light of the ongoing
preparations for the 2020 Census.”213
140. On September 27, 2019, Mr. Gore’s attorney responded that Mr. Gore “remains
unable to be deposed.” The letter explained that the “Justice Department has confirmed to Mr.
Gore that Attorney General Barr maintains his prior instruction,” prohibiting Mr. Gore from
complying with the Committee’s subpoena.214
141. The Commerce Department, meanwhile, has continued to take action to obtain
citizenship data. On September 6, 2019, the Census Bureau stated that an interagency working
group had already been formed and that it would announce a plan for the release of additional
administrative citizenship data on March 31, 2020—the day before Census Day.215
F. Defendants’ Defiance of the Subpoenas Is Causing Immediate and

Irreparable Injury to the Committee
142. Since the House voted to hold Secretary Ross and Attorney General Barr in
contempt, the Commerce Department and DOJ have stopped all productions in response to the
Subpoenas. They and President Trump have refused to narrow their baseless, blanket
“protective” assertion of Executive Privilege, raising questions about the veracity of DOJ’s
213
Letter from Chairman Elijah E. Cummings, Comm. on Oversight and Reform, to John
Gore (Sept. 20, 2019), https://perma.cc/XA8C-QX37, appended as Exhibit RRRR.
214
Letter from John D. Adams to Chairman Elijah E. Cummings, Comm. on Oversight
and Reform (Sept. 27, 2019), https://perma.cc/X4RX-SLX4, appended as Exhibit SSSS.
215
John M. Abowd, Chief Scientist and Associate Director for Research and
Methodology, Census Bureau, Census Bureau Citizenship Data Research and Product
Development (Sept. 6, 2019), https://perma.cc/6ALQ-PXRE?type=image.
58
position that the assertion was necessary to provide the President time to “make a final decision
whether to assert privilege following a full review of these materials.”216
143. By refusing to provide the Committee with the critical information it has
requested, Defendants are preventing the Committee from fulfilling its most essential Article I
functions. Defendants’ conduct interferes with the House’s institutional prerogative to compel
compliance with Congressional subpoenas. Courts have recognized that the House’s power to
obtain the production of papers and testimony from witnesses through compulsory process is
integral to its constitutional mandate to legislate and to oversee the Executive. Permitting
Defendants to impede the Committee’s subpoena power would imperil the separation of powers
essential to the Constitution’s structure of lawful governance.
144. As explained below, the Committee has been, and will continue to be, injured by
Defendants’ refusal to comply with the Subpoenas.
1. The Committee’s Investigation Is Critical to Its Constitutional

Oversight and Legislative Responsibilities
145. The Committee has pursued this investigation and demanded production of
documents in furtherance of two of its most foundational responsibilities under Article I.
146. First, as the principal oversight body of the House of Representatives, the
Committee is charged with overseeing the operations of the Executive Branch. Where, as two
federal courts have concluded here, the evidence reveals bad faith and outright dishonesty by
Executive Branch officials on a matter as critical as the administration of the census, the
Committee has a responsibility to “probe[] into departments of the Federal Government to
216
H82P, appended as Exhibit K.
59
expose corruption”217 and to understand whether the malfeasance has infected other aspects of
census administration such that remedial measures are warranted.
147. The Committee’s oversight interest is particularly compelling in this case because
the Executive Branch, on multiple occasions, has provided false information to Congress.
Indeed, even the Executive Branch has long recognized that Congress has “legitimate oversight
interests” in such circumstances, and executive agencies have therefore produced documents
without assertion of privilege when those documents would shed light on how Congress was
misled.218 Secretary Ross provided false testimony under oath to multiple committees of
Congress, mispresented to the American people the reasons for his attempt to add the citizenship
questions, and then attempted to continue that false narrative when his actions were challenged
in federal court. The Committee has an undeniable interest in understanding the origins and
extent of that dishonesty in order to redress the harm it has caused.
148. From the outset of this investigation, the Committee has emphasized its oversight
interest not only in understanding the circumstances that led Secretary Ross to make false
statements to Congress,219 but also in determining how DOJ and the Commerce Department
217
Watkins v. United States, 354 U.S. 178, 187 (1957).
218
Memorandum from Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr., Dep’t of Justice, to
President Barack Obama, Assertion of Executive Privilege Over Documents Generated in
Response to Congressional Investigation Into Operation Fast and Furious, 1, 6 (June 19, 2012),
https://perma.cc/NP39-LDXZ (indicating that DOJ had shared more than 1,300 pages of internal
deliberative material with a Congressional committee “in acknowledgment that [a previous letter
from DOJ] contained inaccurate information”), appended as Exhibit TTTT.
219
Reform, to Secretary Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Dep’t of Com. (Jan. 8, 2019), https://perma.cc/9V2P-
3JN4, appended as Exhibit XX (“The Committee also has serious concerns about new
evidence … [that] appears to contradict your previous testimony to Congress”); Letter from
Chairman Elijah E. Cummings, Comm. on Oversight and Reform, to Acting Attorney General
Matthew Whitaker, Dep’t of Justice (Feb. 12, 2019), https://perma.cc/5MK3-DQKQ, appended
as Exhibit SSS (“[N]ew information has come to light that casts grave doubts on the veracity of
60
developed the pretextual rationale for the citizenship question,220 how and why Secretary Ross
dismissed the Census Bureau’s concerns about the citizenship question,221 and whether the
Commerce Department is attempting to manipulate the census process to advance improper
goals.222 As Chairman Cummings explained in response to a letter from the Commerce
Department:
Our need for these documents and interviews is clear. The

Committee is seeking to understand the real reason that you added
a citizenship question to the 2020 Census …. The requested
documents and interviews may provide contemporaneous evidence
of the real reason that you added the citizenship question and the
process you followed.223
149. There is clear and substantial evidence of procedural defects relating to the
Census and serious maladministration by senior government officials. The Committee is being
Secretary Ross’s testimony and assertions in the December 2017 letter from DOJ to the Census
Bureau.”).
220
Reform, to Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, Dep’t of Justice (Feb. 12, 2019)
https://perma.cc/5MK3-DQKQ, appended as Exhibit SSS (requesting documents to “help
understand the substance of DOJ’s justification” for requesting the citizenship question and “the
process by which its request was made”); Letter from Chairman Elijah E. Cummings, Comm. on
Oversight and Reform, to Secretary Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Dep’t of Commerce (Mar. 29, 2019),
https://perma.cc/T4HF-7AVA, appended as Exhibit JJJ (explaining the Committee’s interest in
discussions “leading to the issuance of the pretextual decision memorandum in March 2018”).
221
Secretary Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Dep’t of Com. (Jan. 8, 2019), https://perma.cc/9V2P-3JN4,
appended as Exhibit XX (requesting evidence regarding “[Secretary Ross’s] decision to add a
citizenship question … despite warnings from the Census Bureau that it could seriously harm the
accuracy of the count”).
222
Secretary Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Dep’t of Com. (Mar. 29, 2019), https://perma.cc/T4HF-7AVA,
appended as Exhibit JJJ (requesting documents to identify “contemporaneous evidence of the
real reason that [Secretary Ross] added the citizenship question and the process [Secretary Ross]
followed” to do so).
223
Secretary Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Dep’t of Commerce (Mar. 29, 2019), https://perma.cc/T4HF-
7AVA, appended as Exhibit JJJ.
61
blocked from determining the scope and nature of those issues and has been unable to confirm
whether such defects have been remediated or are in need of remediation. The Committee’s
concerns are compounded by the fact that many of the same officials who attempted to add the
illegal citizenship question are still in place today and may be involved with executing various
components of the 2020 Census.224
150. Second and related, the Committee’s investigation is furthering a critical
legislative function. Congress has plenary power to prescribe the administration of the census
“in such Manner as [Congress] shall by Law direct.”225 The Committee, in turn, has
responsibility within the House of Representatives both for “population and demography
generally, including the Census,” and the “[o]verall economy, efficiency, and management of
government operations and activities.”226
151. The Committee has previously described “a wide range of legislative reforms”
that may be appropriate, depending on the content of the subpoenaed materials and the
Committee’s ultimate findings.227 The troubling conduct unearthed thus far—Secretary Ross’s
insistence on adding a citizenship question, his maladministration of the Census Bureau, and his
willingness to fabricate reasons for his actions—has caused the Committee to consider whether
224
Commerce Secretary Ross in Contempt of Congress, 3, 7 (Nov. 12, 2019),
225
U.S. Const. Art. I § 2, cl. 3.
226
U.S. Const. Art. I § 2, cl. 3; House Rule X, cl. 1(n)(6), (n)(8).
227
Commerce Secretary Ross in Contempt of Congress, 14–15 (Nov. 12, 2019),
62
Title 13 of the U.S. Code, which delineates the scope of the Secretary’s authority over the
census, may require amendment.228 The Secretary’s interactions with the Census Bureau and
other entities may require legislative measures to curb political influence on the census or may
require new, judicially enforceable reporting obligations to increase visibility into how the
census is being administered.229 Further evidence of improper influences, objectives, or
considerations in how the Commerce Department is conducting the 2020 Census may prompt
consideration of emergency legislation to safeguard the accuracy of the count and the integrity of
the process.230
152. As Chairman Cummings explained in connection with the contempt vote, the
Committee is responsible for ensuring that “[t]he Census [is] run by nonpartisan experts based on
their professional experience—not manipulated by political appointees as part of a political
228
See id. at 14 (“[I]f the [subpoenaed] evidence demonstrates severe malfeasance and
deception, Congress could revisit the Census Act’s broad delegation of authority to the Secretary
of Commerce.”).
229
See id. at 14 (“[D]epending on what the [subpoenaed] documents reveal concerning
the process for soliciting and evaluating input with respect to the citizenship question, Congress
could enhance current requirements for reporting …. or make disclosure requirements judicially
enforceable. … Depending on what the documents reveal concerning the source and extent of
political influences on the development of the citizenship question, Congress could prohibit the
Commerce Department from taking steps based solely on outside entities’ requests, prohibit the
Census Bureau from collecting or releasing data from the Department of Homeland Security,
increase penalties for unlawful use of Census data, or prohibit the collection or release of
citizenship data for legislative apportionment purposes.”)
230
See, e.g., id. at 14–15 (“Depending on what the documents reveal regarding the
Commerce Department’s efforts to further the accuracy of the enumeration, Congress could
consider legislation to ensure the Census Bureau hires the workers needed for an accurate count,
including requiring certain language thresholds. Congress could also mandate the hiring of
additional personnel, require more interagency resource-sharing, or require consultation with
career Census Bureau officials at various stages of proposed procedural changes.”).
63
influence and interference operation.”231 Throughout its investigation, the Committee has
repeatedly explained that the documents it seeks may inform a range of legislative responses
intended to further that goal. For example, the Committee wrote to Attorney General Barr in
June 2019 that “[t]he Committee’s investigation may lead to legislation, including but not limited
to … requiring disclosure of census questions proposed by third parties … [or] mandating
additional non-response follow-up to prevent an undercount ….”232 In July, the Committee
reiterated to both Defendants that “[the subpoenaed] documents are critical to the Committee’s
ongoing investigation into how and why the Trump Administration sought to add a citizenship
question to the 2020 Census based on a pretext,” and that “the Committee’s investigation may
lead Congress to pursue legislation pursuant to its broad Constitutional authority to carry out the
Census ‘in such manner as they shall by law direct.’”233 In a November 2019 memorandum, the
231
Press Release, Committee Votes on Bipartisan Basis to Hold Barr and Ross in
Contempt, Comm. on Oversight and Reform (June 12, 2019), https://perma.cc/9ZX8-W45R,
appended as Exhibit UUUU.
232
Attorney General William P. Barr, Dep’t of Justice (June 3, 2019), https://perma.cc/3PSZ-C4ZR,
appended as Exhibit YYY; see also Contempt Report at 6, appended as Exhibit III (providing
“illustrative examples” of potential legislation).
233
Secretary Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Dep’t of Commerce, and Attorney General William P. Barr, Dep’t
of Justice (July 23, 2019) , https://perma.cc/B7SW-57RY, appended as Exhibit KKKK.
Multiple Committee members have introduced census-related bills since the beginning of this
Congress. See, e.g., 2020 Census IDEA Act, H.R.732, 116th Cong. (2019) (bill to prohibit the
Department of Commerce, in the 2020 Census and subsequent censuses, from implementing
major new features without three years of research and testing and requiring certifications by the
Government Accountability Office); Ensuring Full Participation in the Census Act of 2019, H.R.
1734, 116th Cong. (2019) (bill to prohibit questions regarding citizenship, nationality, and
immigration status of a Census respondent or their family members); Correct the Census Count
Act, H.R. 794, 116th Cong. (2019) (amendment to Title 13 to attribute to prisoners their last
place of residence before incarceration for purposes of the census).
64
Committee identified specific examples of remedial legislation already introduced in the House
and related to the subpoenaed documents.234
2. The Subpoenaed Documents Are Necessary to the Committee’s

Investigation
153. To fulfill its oversight, investigative, and legislative responsibilities, the
Committee needs the full and unredacted documents it has subpoenaed. Those documents reflect
the reasons and process for developing the citizenship question, the coordination between the
Commerce Department and DOJ to create a pretextual rationale, and the involvement of outside
parties in implementing the question.235
154. The Ross Subpoena focuses on the 11 priority documents, one of which—the
Uthmeier Memorandum—was also included in the Barr Subpoena.236 The Subpoenas also
demand from both Defendants all internal and external documents and communications, from
January 20, 2017 through December 20, 2017, regarding the addition of a citizenship question.
That category encompasses DOJ’s drafts of the Gary Letter.
155. The 11 priority documents reflect significant developments in the Commerce
Department’s efforts to add the citizenship question. The unredacted portions are likely to shed
additional light on unresolved factual issues central to the Committee’s oversight and legislative
purposes: what were Secretary Ross’s true reasons for pursuing the question, as communicated
to his staff; whom outside of the Commerce Department did he interact with in his efforts to add
234
Commerce Secretary Ross in Contempt of Congress, 3, 7 (Nov. 12, 2019),
235
See id.
236
See supra ¶ 107.
65
the question; how and why did Secretary Ross overrule independent Census Bureau experts and
deny them critical information; and how and why did Secretary Ross and DOJ collaborate in
concealing from Congress and the public their true objectives.
156. The Uthmeier Memorandum, for example, is a substantive communication from
the Commerce Department to DOJ that goes to the heart of the interactions between the two
agencies in creating the VRA pretext. The Memorandum’s delivery method—by hand and
accompanied by a handwritten note, with the goal of avoiding any digital fingerprints—suggests
a contemporaneous effort to conceal the Uthmeier Memorandum’s contents.
157. Eight of the 11 priority documents similarly reflect communications among high-
level Commerce Department officials about the citizenship question before receipt of the Gary
Letter, which purportedly “initiated” the process of adding the question.
158. The remainder of the 11 documents (the December Emails and the February 2018
Emails) concern the Commerce Department’s messaging to Congress and the public regarding
the false rationale for adding the citizenship question. Access to the full context and content of
those communications is necessary for the Committee to assess whether it can credit assertions
by the Commerce Department on census matters, or whether Congress must instead impose new
reporting requirements.
159. The Commerce Department has withheld the Uthmeier Memorandum entirely. It
has produced the other 10 priority documents with significant redactions that obscure critical
context.237 For example, the May 2 Emails contain the following comment from Secretary Ross:
“Worst of all they emphasize that they have settled with congress on the questions to be asked. I
am mystified why nothing have [sic] been done in response to my months old request that we
237
The produced versions of those 10 priority documents are appended as Exhibits
VVVV through EEEEE.
66
include the citizenship question. Why not?” Mr. Comstock responds that “we will get that in
place.” Large blocks of text are completely redacted on both sides of Secretary Ross’s
statement, preventing the Committee from determining to whom the “they” referred, seeing
additional information regarding the Secretary’s “months-old request,” or understanding the
follow-up process he directed be put “in place.” The privilege log that the Commerce
Department provided states that the redacted materials in the May 2 Emails refer to “[p]re-
decisional opinions re: census,” despite the Secretary’s statement in the email itself that he had
long since decided to add the citizenship question.238
160. Similarly, in the August Emails, Secretary Ross stated: “They seem dig [sic] in
about not sling [sic] the citizenship question and that raises the question of where is the DOJ in
their analysis?” The beginning of that email is redacted, which may conceal the identity of
individuals or entities to which the Secretary refers.
161. In another exchange, a sentence in the September 1 Emails begins, “To run
census,” followed by a comma. The clause that immediately follows is redacted, as are several
additional lines of text. The related privilege log entries cite “[r]edacted predecisional discussion
about status of various matters unrelated to census” and “[r]edacted information with no
relevance to census.”239 That explanation is dubious—the redacted text appears to be about the
census—and calls into question the reliability of Defendants’ other redactions.
162. The Subpoenas’ broader categories relate to the involvement of internal and
external parties in the Commerce Department’s and DOJ’s process for adding the citizenship
question. These categories may encompass communications that are as significant as, or more
238
Privilege Log from Dep’t of Com. (Feb. 19, 2019) at 117, appended as Exhibit
FFFFF.
239
Id. at 58, 68.
67
significant than, the 11 key documents, but that remain unknown to the Committee because the
Commerce Department and DOJ have withheld them. Responsive, unredacted documents will
help the Committee understand the nature of the maladministration that resulted in the
citizenship question being added over the concerns of experts and in DOJ providing a false
pretext for the question. The information will also permit accurate evaluation of the competence
and faithfulness of government officials, including the Secretary of Commerce, in discharging
their duties; illuminate the reasons for Commerce Department and DOJ officials’ inaccurate
statements to Congress and to the public; identify active risks to the independence of the Census
Bureau from entities or individuals within and outside the Commerce Department; and illuminate
the degree to which the Census process has been politicized, which may negatively affect efforts
to count portions of the population or may result in the misuse of other data collected by the
Commerce Department. Both the Commerce Department and DOJ have acknowledged that
documents responsive to this request remain outstanding,240 and DOJ has volunteered that the
number of these outstanding responsive documents is “significant.”241
163. The Barr Subpoena also encompasses drafts of the Gary Letter. As explained
above, see supra ¶ 57, one of the apparent inputs into what became the Gary Letter was a
document—“a draft letter that would request reinstatement of the citizenship question on the
census questionnaire”—that Mr. Neuman, the Trump transition official who was advising
240
Exhibit QQQ; Letter from Stephen E. Boyd, Assistant Att’y Gen., Dep’t of Justice, to Chairman
241
68
Secretary Ross, provided to Mr. Gore, the Gary Letter’s principal author.242 That draft letter
contained language that matched, word-for-word, a document that had been created on August
30, 2017, and was found on the hard drive of Mr. Hofeller, the Republican gerrymandering
expert.243
164. Drafts of the Gary Letter would clarify the connection with Mr. Hofeller’s draft—
and with Mr. Hofeller’s conclusion that redistricting based on citizenship data would politically
benefit “Republicans and Non-Hispanic whites.”244 DOJ, however, has refused to produce such
drafts, and like the Commerce Department, has declined to produce the hand-delivered Uthmeier
Memorandum or the hand-written note from Mr. Uthmeier to Mr. Gore.
165. Finally, both DOJ and the Commerce Department acknowledge that there are
additional responsive documents they possess but will not produce, in reliance on faulty and
overbroad assertions of Executive Privilege.245
3. The Injury to the Committee Is Irreparable
166. The injury to the Committee is immediate and irreparable for at least two reasons.
242
7, 2019), https://perma.cc/BXT5-KF8C.
243
See Letter from John A. Freedman, Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP, to the
Honorable Jesse M. Furman, United States District Court for the Southern District of New York,
3 (May 30, 2019), https://perma.cc/4MS8-77RG, appended as Exhibit JJ; see also Michael
Wines, “Deceased G.O.P. Strategist’s Hard Drives Reveal New Details on the Census
Citizenship Question,” N.Y. Times (May 30, 2019), https://perma.cc/CRA6-WB8C.
244
Thomas Hofeller, The Use of Citizen Voting Age Population in Redistricting (2015),
https://perma.cc/5X28-4AP5, appended as Exhibit M.
245
Exhibit QQQ; Letter from Stephen E. Boyd, Assistant Att’y Gen., Dep’t of Justice, to Chairman
69
167. First, because the House is not a continuing body, the Committee’s investigation
will necessarily end on January 3, 2021. Even assuming a future Committee were to decide to
continue the investigation—of which there is no guarantee—it would have to reissue similar
requests and subpoenas. This would result in further unnecessary and harmful delay, interfering
with the Committee’s ability to conduct oversight and craft responsible, timely legislation.
168. Second, as described above, the evidence uncovered to date indicates that the
Committee must urgently consider whether legislation is necessary to ensure the integrity of the
2020 Census, which is already in process. Any legislative reforms to safeguard this Census must
be considered immediately. The 2020 Census begins in Alaska on January 21, 2020, and in the
rest of the country on April 1, 2020.246
169. The House has delegated to the Committee the responsibility of analyzing
“conditions and circumstances that may indicate the necessity or desirability of enacting new or
additional legislation” concerning “the Census” and the “management of government
operations,” and of “assist[ing] the House” in its “formulation, consideration, and enactment of
changes in Federal laws, and of such additional legislation as may be necessary or
appropriate.”247
170. The Committee’s investigation has already identified “conditions and
circumstances” warranting immediate legislative attention. The Secretary of Commerce has in
the course of administering the 2020 Census engaged in a broad range of conduct that suggests
improper influence and bias: He has tried to mislead Congress, the American people, and federal
courts; rejected the views of experts at the Census Bureau; collaborated with other agencies to
246
Why the U.S. Census Starts in Alaska’s Most Remote, Rural Villages, National Public
Radio (Jan. 21, 2019), https://perma.cc/AB7C-GC4E.
247
House Rule X, 1(n)(6), 1(n)(8), 2(a).
70
conceal his true purposes; directed his staff to create a pretextual distraction from his true
reasons for departing from decades of census practice; and refused to share information with the
Census Bureau about his actions. This aspect of the Secretary’s conduct was caught in time and
exposed by the Committee as well as by three district courts and, ultimately, the Supreme
Court,248 and the attempt to add the citizenship question was thwarted.
171. But that attempt manifests a troubling course of conduct. While the evidence of
this course of conduct surfaced in the course of examining one aspect of census administration—
the attempt to add a citizenship question—it highlights a far broader concern: that the census
process as a whole may be vulnerable to, and already infected with, improper political influence
under the current Commerce Department leadership. The facts revealed thus far also raise the
possibility that Congress’s current delegation to the Secretary of Commerce of its authority to
conduct the Census may be undermining and endangering the integrity of the 2020 Census and
the reliability of its results.
172. Commerce Department personnel will oversee certain key steps of the 2020
Census process and preparations for its administration. For example, in addition to hiring
temporary staff to conduct the Census and implementing technical infrastructure to safeguard the
personal information it collects, the Census Bureau is preparing for the first phase of its
communications campaign, which is essential to increasing participation among minority and
hard-to-count populations that are traditionally less likely to respond.249 This effort is
particularly important because the Administration’s previous efforts to add the citizenship
248
See Kravitz v. Dep’t of Commerce, 336 F. Supp. 3d 545 (D. Md. 2018); California v.
Ross, 358 F. Supp. 3d 965 (N.D. Cal. 2019); New York v. United States Dep’t of Commerce, 351
F. Supp. 3d 502 (S.D.N.Y. 2019); Dep’t of Com. v. New York, 139 S. Ct. 2551 (2019).
249
Census Bureau, Census Barriers, Attitudes, and Motivators Study Survey and Focus
Groups Report Findings Presentation (Feb. 1, 2019), https://perma.cc/5BVA-QAFY.
71
question may have already discouraged some communities from participating.250 As
Subcommittee Chairman Jamie Raskin explained at the July 24, 2019 hearing: “aggressive
steps” are needed “to repair the damage caused by this ill-considered campaign.”251
173. An immediate legislative response could take a variety of forms, depending on the
further evidence the investigation uncovers.252 For example, documents may reveal information
about the adequacy of the resources the Commerce Department is devoting to the 2020 Census,
in which case Congress could consider legislation to ensure the Census Bureau is making
sufficient efforts to hire workers needed for an accurate count, including requiring certain
language thresholds.253 Congress also could mandate the hiring of additional personnel, require
more interagency resource-sharing, or require consultation with career Census Bureau officials at
various critical stages of the process.254 Congress also may determine that additional funding or
legislative direction is necessary to carry out a robust and effective communications plan to
encourage participation in the 2020 Census.255 Legislation could increase resources for
communications, require that the Census Bureau launch a media campaign in languages other
250
Local Groups: ‘Damage Has Already Been Done’ by Census Citizenship Question,
National Public Radio (July 4, 2019), https://perma.cc/H4EL-KCHN.
251
Hearing Before the Comm. on Oversight and Reform, Subcomm. on Civil Rights and
Civil Liberties: Beyond the Citizenship Question: Repairing the Damage and Preparing to
Count “We the People” in 2020, 116th Cong. 2–3 (July 24, 2019), webcast available at
https://tinyurl.com/vzwm6oh, excerpt appended as Exhibit QQQQ.
252
Commerce Secretary Ross in Contempt of Congress, 14–15 (Nov. 12, 2019),
253
Id. at 14.
254
Id. at 14–15.
255
Id. at 15.
72
than English, or require the Bureau to use additional media platforms to reach hard-to-count
populations.256
174. To be effective, these steps must be implemented quickly. The administration of
the decennial census is enormously time- and resource-intensive, and any emergency legislation
could be burdensome and disruptive. The Committee must immediately review all relevant
evidence that would inform the need for and minimum necessary scope of such legislation. The
Committee’s investigation is therefore urgent; the injury to the Committee—and to its
constitutional role of ensuring the integrity of the census—increases with each passing day.
G. The Defendants’ Justifications for Defying the Subpoenas Are Invalid
175. Defendants have sought to invoke a number of privileges and purported
confidentiality interests—“ongoing litigation,” deliberative process privilege, attorney-client
privilege, and Executive Privilege—as grounds to defy the Subpoenas. None of those rationales
justifies withholding information from the Committee.
1. Defendants Cannot Withhold Information from the Committee Based

on Parallel Civil Litigation
176. Both DOJ and the Commerce Department have cited confidentiality concerns
arising from ongoing civil litigation as a basis for refusing to comply with the Subpoenas.257
256
Id.
257
See, e.g., Email from Staff, Dep’t of Justice, to Staff, Comm. on Oversight and
Reform, “RE: Transcribed Interview Follow Up” (Mar. 22, 2019, 3:27 PM), appended as
Exhibit VVV; Hearing Before H. Comm. on Oversight and Reform: Progress Report on the
2020 Census, 115th Cong. (May 18, 2018), webcast available at https://tinyurl.com/t6aw6r8,
excerpt appended as Exhibit ZZZ (in which Gore refused to answer numerous questions, citing
in part his concerns about “pending litigation, the potential effect any public statement might
have on ongoing court cases and the department litigation constraints”); Hearing with Commerce
Secretary Ross Before the H. Comm. on Oversight and Reform, 116th Cong. (Mar. 14, 2019),
https://perma.cc/WL25-NTHU, excerpts appended as Exhibit S (in which Secretary Ross
refused to provide key information or documents requested by the Committee, stating: “I will
73
There is no “ongoing litigation privilege” that would permit Defendants to defy a Congressional
subpoena, and in any event, the purported confidentiality concerns no longer apply here.
177. The Constitution provides Congress with the responsibility to conduct oversight
of, and to pass laws relating to, the census, and the Committee has authority that is separate and
independent from any litigation being pursued in civil courts.
178. The Supreme Court has clearly and repeatedly ruled that parallel litigation does
not preclude Congress from investigating an issue and is not a valid reason to withhold
information from Congress. The Court explained in Hutcheson v. United States:
[S]urely a congressional committee which is engaged in a

legitimate legislative investigation need not grind to a halt
whenever responses to its inquiries might potentially be harmful to
a witness in some distinct proceeding, or when crime or
wrongdoing is disclosed.258
179. The Court also held in Sinclair v. United States:
It may be conceded that Congress is without authority to compel

disclosures for the purpose of aiding the prosecution of pending
suits; but the authority of that body, directly or through its
committees, to require pertinent disclosures in aid of its own
constitutional power is not abridged because the information
sought to be elicited may also be of use in such suits.259
180. Consistent with that authority, under both Republican and Democratic leadership,
the Committee has routinely conducted investigations concurrent with parallel litigation and has
received documents and testimony from federal and state agencies and private entities.260
certainly address the question to my staff and to my counsel. To the degree that this is involved
in pending litigation, there may be problems.”).
258
369 U.S. 599, 618 (1962) (internal citations omitted) (citing McGrain v. Daugherty,
273 U.S. 135, 179–180, and Sinclair v. United States, 279 U.S. 263, 295 (1929), overruled on
other grounds by United States v. Gaudin, 515 U.S. 506 (1995)).
259
279 U.S. at 295.
260
See Contempt Report, appended as Exhibit III, supra n. 155, pp. 27–31 (citing
examples).
74
181. In any event, the Supreme Court has already resolved the challenge to the
citizenship question, affirming the District Court’s ruling that Secretary Ross’s decision to add
that question to the 2020 Census was illegal absent a genuine rationale.261 Defendants have since
abandoned their effort to pursue addition of the question, and the Trump Administration has
instead issued an Executive Order declaring that it will seek to obtain citizenship information
through other means.262 In light of these developments, the litigation that purportedly paralleled
the Committee’s investigation is substantially complete.263 Accordingly, Defendants no longer
have any plausible basis to assert confidentiality concerns arising from ongoing litigation as a
reason to withhold information from the Committee.
2. Attorney-Client Privilege, the Deliberative Process Privilege, and the

Attorney Work Product Doctrine Are Not Valid Grounds for Defying
a Congressional Subpoena
182. Defendants have asserted that the documents they have withheld are “covered by
a variety of privileges, including the deliberative process privilege, the attorney-client privilege,
and the attorney work product” doctrine.264 Those common-law privileges and doctrines do not
justify refusing to produce responsive information to Congress, which derives its authority from
the Constitution.
261
Dep’t of Com. v. New York, 139 S. Ct. 2551 (2019).
262
Executive Order on Collecting Information about Citizenship Status in Connection
with the Decennial Census, The White House (July 11, 2019), https://perma.cc/D24K-JKDD,
appended as Exhibit IIII.
263
The only remaining aspects of the litigation are sanctions motions, which are pending
in New York v. U.S. Dep’t of Com.. See, e.g., NYIC Plaintiff’s Reply Brief in Support of Motion
for Sanctions, Docket No. 654, 18-cv-2921 (S.D.N.Y. 2019).
264
Comm. on Oversight and Reform (June 6, 2019), https://perma.cc/Y27K-WJHC, appended as
Exhibit PPP; see also Letter from Stephen E. Boyd, Assistant Att’y Gen., Dep’t of Justice, to
Chairman Elijah E. Cummings, Comm. on Oversight and Reform, 2 (June 6, 2019),
75
183. Then-Chairman Chaffetz and Ranking Member Cummings articulated the
longstanding, bipartisan position of the Committee in a May 2017 letter:
The House of Representatives derives its authority from the United

States Constitution and is bound only by the privileges derived
therefrom.… [N]either the Committee nor the United States House
of Representatives recognizes purported non-disclosure privileges
associated with the common law. Further, the mere possibility that
a common law privilege may apply in a judicial proceeding is not,
in and of itself, a legal justification to withhold documents from
this Committee or the Congress.265
184. Similarly, this Committee has never recognized the deliberative process privilege
as a valid reason to withhold documents from Congress. The D.C. Circuit has held that the
deliberative process privilege is “primarily a common law privilege,” contrasting it with the
Presidential communications privilege, which the court reasoned was “rooted in constitutional
separation of powers principles and the President’s unique constitutional role.”266
185. Not only is the deliberative process privilege unavailable in response to
Congressional subpoenas as a general matter, but that privilege has no application in this specific
dispute. That is so for at least three reasons.
186. First, very little, if any, of the information covered by the Subpoenas even falls
within the scope of the deliberative process privilege. As the District Court for the Southern
District of New York concluded, and the evidence confirms, Secretary Ross made the decision to
add the citizenship question early in his tenure at the Commerce Department.267 By May 2017,
265
Letter from Chairman Jason Chaffetz, et al., Comm. on Oversight and Gov’t Reform,
to Huban Gowadia, Acting Administrator, Transportation Security Administration, 1 (May 2,
2017), https://perma.cc/HSA7-ZWJ8, appended as Exhibit GGGGG.
266
In re Sealed Case, 121 F.3d 729, 737, 745 (D.C. Cir. 1997); but see Comm. on
Oversight & Gov't Reform v. Holder, No. 12-1332, 2014 WL 12662665, *2 (D.D.C. Aug. 20,
2014) (entertaining an assertion of deliberative process privilege in response to a Congressional
subpoena).
267
New York v. U.S. Dep’t of Com., 351 F. Supp. 3d at 568, 571.
76
Secretary Ross was venting frustration at his staff for their lack of execution on that decision—
which even then he described as “months old.”268 The deliberative process privilege covers only
information that is both “deliberative” and “predecisional.”269 It does not encompass
communications that were created after an agency decision has been made. Thus, all of the
communications after Secretary Ross instructed his staff to secure the inclusion of the citizenship
question lie outside the privilege.
187. Second, to the extent it is deemed to apply, the deliberative process privilege is a
“qualified privilege, and it can be overcome by a sufficient showing of need.”270 That showing is
easily satisfied here.
188. As explained above, the Committee’s investigation is critical both from the
perspective of legislative response and effective oversight. In addition to legislation that may
affect the decennial census in 2030 and beyond, the Committee may, on the basis of its findings,
need to act urgently to identify deficiencies in the 2020 Census and to craft responsive
legislation.
189. From an oversight perspective, the Committee’s investigation has revealed that
the Executive Branch has made misleading statements to Congress and the American people.
Both the Supreme Court and the District Court for the Southern District of New York have
concluded that the record reflects “a strong showing of bad faith” on Defendants’ part.271 Where
“there is reason to believe the documents sought may shed light on government misconduct, the
268
See supra ¶ 46.
269
In re Sealed Case, 121 F.3d at 737.
270
Comm. on Oversight & Gov’t Reform v. Holder, No. 12-1332, 2014 WL 12662665, at
*2 (D.D.C. Aug. 20, 2014); see also In re Sealed Case, 121 F.3d at 737.
271
Dep’t of Com. v. New York, 139 S. Ct. at 2574; see New York v. U.S. Dep’t of Com.,
351 F. Supp. 3d at 529.
77
[deliberative process] privilege is routinely denied” and “disappears altogether.”272 That is
certainly the case here, where the Committee’s investigation has raised serious questions about
whether, among other things, the Trump Administration had an unconstitutional motive—such as
drawing legislative boundaries that were “advantageous” to “Non-Hispanic Whites”—when it
added the citizenship question to the Census. President Trump’s comments that the goal of the
question was “districting” make that inquiry all the more pressing.273
190. Third, Defendants have waived any claim to the deliberative process privilege by
releasing numerous public statements regarding their decision-making and selectively denying
certain allegations. For example, DOJ stated in May that Mr. Hofeller’s study “played no role in
the Department’s December 2017 request to reinstate a citizenship question to the 2020
decennial census,”274 but it has refused to produce emails and drafts that would allow the
Committee to examine whether that claim is true. The Administration cannot hide behind
“deliberative process privilege” to deny Congress these documents while simultaneously making
public representations about this very issue.
3. Executive Privilege Does Not Justify Defendants’ Noncompliance with

the Committee’s Subpoenas
191. For similar reasons, there is no validity to the last-minute attempt—made on the
day of the Committee’s meeting to consider the contempt resolution—to assert Executive
Privilege over the information the Committee seeks.
272
In re Sealed Case, 121 F.3d at 738, 746 (internal citations omitted).
273
https://perma.cc/QK6V-833H (stating that the attempt to add the citizenship question was
motivated by “districting. You need it for appropriations. Where are the funds going? How
many people are there? Are they citizens? Are they not citizens?”), appended as Exhibit WW.
274
“GOP Redistricting Strategist Played Role in Push for Census Citizenship Question,”
NPR (May 30, 2019), https://perma.cc/S9HQ-99Y5.
78
192. DOJ and the Commerce Department reported that the White House had asserted
the privilege over certain subpoenaed documents, including the individual priority documents
and the drafts of the Gary Letter, and had claimed a blanket “protective assertion of executive
privilege” over the remainder of the documents responsive to the Subpoenas.275
193. The assertion is procedurally invalid, coming well after “the scheduled date of
testimony or appearance” or a “due date” provided by the Committee Chair, as Committee Rules
require.276
194. The assertion also fails on the merits. As to the “protective assertion,” the only
ground offered for casting an indiscriminate, all-encompassing cloak over the remaining
documents was the purported need for additional time to review each document to determine
whether privilege actually applies. But months have passed with no apparent effort to undertake
that review and no further productions of any documents in response to the Subpoenas—despite
additional outreach from the Committee following the Departments’ privilege assertion and the
House’s contempt vote.277
195. The President is not alleged to have been a party to the communications identified
in the Subpoenas, nor have the Defendants asserted that Presidential communications are among
the responsive documents. To the contrary, Secretary Ross has explicitly represented to the
275
Elijah E. Cummings, Comm. on Oversight and Reform (June 11, 2019), https://perma.cc/D439-
FJZ9, appended as Exhibit EEEE.
276
Rule 16(c) of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, 116th Cong.
277
Attorney General William P. Barr, Dep’t of Justice, and Secretary Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Dep’t of
Com. (July 23, 2019), https://perma.cc/B7SW-57RY, appended as Exhibit KKKK (urging
Secretary Ross and Attorney General Bar to “reconsider your position and comply with the
Committee’s subpoenas”).
79
Committee in writing that “[n]o officials from the White House were a part of” the process of
adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census.278
196. In light of that representation, there are only two possibilities: Either Secretary
Ross’s statement is accurate, in which case the constitutionally-based Presidential
communications privilege does not apply, or Secretary Ross’s statement is inaccurate, in which
case the Secretary deliberately provided yet more false information to Congress and the privilege
is vitiated.
197. More generally, it is axiomatic that Executive Privilege may not be invoked to
conceal government wrongdoing.279 The Executive Branch itself has acknowledged that when,
as here, inaccurate information has been provided to Congress, Executive Privilege cannot bar
Congress from investigating the genesis of the inaccuracies. In the Committee’s investigation of
Operation Fast and Furious, for example, DOJ requested that the President assert Executive
Privilege over a number of documents, but excluded from that request internal deliberative
communications that shed light on how DOJ furnished Congress with inaccurate information.280
278
Letter from Wilbur L. Ross Jr., Secretary of Commerce, to the Honorable Elijah E.
Cummings, U.S. House of Representatives (Dec. 21, 2018), https://perma.cc/HG4Y-4367,
appended as Exhibit HHHHH.
279
In re Sealed Case, 121 F.3d at 738 (“Where there is reason to believe the documents
sought may shed light on government misconduct, the privilege is routinely denied, on the
grounds that shielding internal government deliberations in this context does not serve the
public’s interest in honest, effective government.”) (internal citations and quotation marks
omitted).
280
Memorandum from Eric H. Holder, Jr., Attorney General of the United States, to
Barack Obama, President of the United States, Assertion of Executive Privilege Over Documents
Generated in Response to Congressional Investigation Into Operation Fast and Furious, 1, 6
(June 19, 2012), https://perma.cc/NP39-LDXZ (noting the Committee’s “legitimate oversight
interests” in understanding the origins of inaccurate information contained in a DOJ letter and
emphasizing that the Department had shared more than 1,000 pages of internal deliberative
material with the Committee “in acknowledgment that the [letter] contained inaccurate
information”), appended as Exhibit TTTT.
80
Similarly, in this case, Executive Privilege cannot shield documents and communications that
reveal how and why the Commerce Department made numerous false and misleading statements
to the public, Congress, and the courts about the genesis of the citizenship question.
198. Indeed, the assertion of Executive Privilege is uniquely inappropriate in this case.
Among the government misconduct here—the reason the Supreme Court found bad faith in this
record—is the very same attempt at concealment that the Defendants are now seeking to advance
by cloaking their communications in the protection of the Constitution. This Court should not
permit Defendants to continue their concealment in yet another forum. The Committee is
entitled to complete its investigation and consider appropriate legislative responses.
SPECIFIC CLAIMS FOR RELIEF
COUNT I
ARTICLE I OF THE CONSTITUTION
199. The Committee incorporates by reference and re-alleges the preceding
paragraphs, as if set forth fully herein.
200. The Barr Subpoena was duly authorized, issued, and served pursuant to the
Committee’s authority under Article I of the Constitution of the United States.
201. The Barr Subpoena was issued as part of the Committee’s investigation of matters
squarely within its legislative and oversight jurisdiction and pursuant to the Committee’s
legitimate legislative purpose.
202. The Barr Subpoena requires Attorney General Barr to produce, in unredacted
form, all documents set forth in the schedules attached to the Barr Subpoena, yet Attorney
General Barr continues to refuse to do so.
203. The Committee has repeatedly offered reasonable accommodations to facilitate
the required productions, but the accommodations process is at an impasse.
81
204. Attorney General Barr has violated and continues to violate his legal obligations
by refusing to produce the unredacted documents as required by the Barr Subpoena.
205. None of the bases and privileges asserted for withholding the subpoenaed
documents is valid.
206. Any applicable privileges have been waived by the Executive Branch’s extensive
prior statements concerning the decision to add a citizenship question to the Census.
207. The Committee has been, and will continue to be, injured as a result of Attorney
General Barr’s defiance of the duly-authorized Barr Subpoena.
COUNT II
ARTICLE I OF THE CONSTITUTION
208. The Committee incorporates by reference and re-alleges the preceding
paragraphs, as if set forth fully herein.
209. The Ross Subpoena was duly authorized, issued, and served pursuant to the
Committee’s authority under Article I of the Constitution of the United States.
210. The Ross Subpoena was issued as part of the Committee’s investigation of
matters squarely within its legislative and oversight jurisdiction and pursuant to the Committee’s
legitimate legislative purpose.
211. The Ross Subpoena requires Secretary Ross to produce, in unredacted form, all
documents set forth in the schedule attached to the Ross Subpoena, yet Secretary Ross continues
to refuse to do so.
212. The Committee has repeatedly attempted to make reasonable accommodations for
the required productions, but those efforts are at an impasse.
213. Secretary Ross has violated and continues to violate his legal obligations by
refusing to produce the unredacted documents as required by the Ross Subpoena.
82
214. None of the bases and privileges asserted for withholding the subpoenaed
documents is valid.
215. Any applicable privileges have been waived by the Executive Branch’s extensive
prior statements concerning the decision to add a citizenship question to the Census.
216. The Committee has been, and will continue to be, injured as a result of Attorney
General Barr’s defiance of the duly-authorized Barr Subpoena.
PRAYER FOR RELIEF
Wherefore, the Committee respectfully prays that this Court:
A. Enter declaratory and injunctive relief as follows:
a. Declare that the Defendants’ objections to the Subpoenas are invalid; and
b. Declare that the Defendants’ failure to produce the documents responsive to the
Subpoenas either in their entirety or in unredacted form is without legal
justification.
c. Order the Defendants to produce immediately to the Committee, in unredacted form
and including all emails and attachments in each email chain, copies of:
i. The Uthmeier Memorandum;
ii. The other 10 priority documents described in paragraph 91, supra;
iii. All drafts of the Gary Letter;
iv. All other communications from January 20, 2017, through
December 12, 2017, between or among officials from the
Commerce Department, the Census Bureau, and any other office or
entity inside or outside of the government regarding the addition of
the citizenship question; and
83
v. All other documents and communications from January 20, 2017
through December 12, 2017 within DOJ and with outside entities
regarding the request to add a citizenship question to the census,
including, but not limited to, communications between DOJ and
the White House, the Commerce Department, the Republican
National Committee, the Trump Campaign, and Members of
Congress.
B. Retain jurisdiction to review and resolve additional disputes relating to Defendants’
compliance with any order or orders by this Court.
C. Grant all other and further relief that is just and proper under the circumstances.
Respectfully submitted,
/s/ Douglas N. Letter .

Douglas N. Letter (D.C. Bar No. 253492),
General Counsel
Todd B. Tatelman (VA Bar No. 66008),
Deputy General Counsel
Megan Barbero (MA Bar No. 668854),
Associate General Counsel
Josephine Morse (D.C. Bar No. 1531317),
Associate General Counsel
Adam A. Grogg (D.C. Bar No. 1552438)
Assistant General Counsel
OFFICE OF GENERAL COUNSEL*

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
219 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
Telephone: (202) 225-9700
[email protected]
*
Attorneys for the Office of General Counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives are
entitled, for the purpose of performing the counsel’s functions, to enter an appearance in any
proceeding before any court of the United States or of any State or political subdivision thereof
without compliance with any requirements for admission to practice before such court. 2 U.S.C.
§ 5571.
84
David A. O’Neil (D.C. Bar No. 1030615)

Anna A. Moody (D.C. Bar No. 1047647)
Laura E. O’Neill (D.C. Bar No. 1033764)
Nathaniel Johnson (D.C. Bar No. 241433) (D.D.C.
admission application pending)
DEBEVOISE & PLIMPTON, LLP
801 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20004
Telephone: (202) 383-8000
Counsel for Plaintiff the Committee on Oversight

and Reform, U.S. House of Representatives
November 26, 2019
85

House Oversight Sues Barr, Ross

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Case 1:19-cv-03557 Document 1 Filed 11/26/19 Page 1 of 85

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM,

WILLIAM P. BARR, in his official capacity as

WILBUR L. ROSS, JR., in his official capacity as

COMPLAINT FOR DECLARATORY AND INJUNCTIVE RELIEF

with duly authorized, issued, and served Committee subpoenas.

1. The decennial census is a cornerstone of our democracy. Article I of the

accuracy of the census is important to every American.

request from DOJ, which, he said, had “initiated” the process.6

3. But those explanations—and Secretary Ross’s similar statements to Congress, the

rationale late in the process.”8

4. The Committee is investigating the attempt to add a citizenship question to the

advisors—including then-Chief Strategist Steve Bannon and then-Chief of Staff Reince

of the Census more generally.16

7. Despite the Committee’s extensive efforts at accommodations, Secretary Ross and

documents, ceasing any and all productions in response to the Subpoenas.18

8. In light of Defendants’ withholding of responsive information from the

the Subpoenas,20 and the parties are therefore at an impasse.

influences on the nonpartisan Census process, the Commerce Department’s willingness to

complete, the damage to the Census cannot be undone.

Committee “a meaningful chance to obtain any relief.”23

Defendants to comply with their legal obligations.

JURISDICTION AND VENUE

claims arise under Article I of the U.S. Constitution.

is just and proper pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §§ 2201 and 2202.

16. Venue is proper in this Court pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1391(b)(2).

the United States and head of DOJ.

United States Department of Commerce.

legislative Powers,”25 which includes authority to conduct oversight of Executive Branch

an essential and appropriate auxiliary to the legislative function.”27 The “[i]ssuance of

investigate … [and] an indispensable ingredient of lawmaking.”28 The scope of these powers is

Reform, granting it legislative jurisdiction over “[p]opulation and demography generally,

management of government operations and activities.”34 The Committee, accordingly, has

of its processes, and further the accuracy of its results.

24. As a standing committee, the Committee has “general oversight

census topics,” and in particular, “examine inaccurate testimony to Congress” by Executive

documents as it considers necessary.”43

for the privilege asserted.”49

II. FACTUAL ALLEGATIONS

to provide a “distraction” from the real reasons for the decision.

blanket, indiscriminate invocation of Executive Privilege over any remaining documents,

Defendants have ceased all productions in response to the Subpoenas.

A. Secretary Ross, Acting in Concert with Other Trump Administration

1. The Trump Campaign and Transition Team Discussed Adding a

33. Republican gerrymandering expert Thomas Hofeller played a foundational role in

Non-Hispanic Whites.”56 It also concluded: “Without a question on citizenship being included

question to the Census.59

2. The President and His Top Advisors Discussed Adding a Citizenship

3. Secretary Ross Decided to Add the Citizenship Question Early in His

of Counting Illegal Immigrants.”63

Secretary Ross had been “at the direction of Steve Bannon.”66

Hamilton of the Department of Homeland Security.71 In a transcribed interview with Committee

“didn’t really have a use for the information.”72