Thread by @SenatorLeahy

IMPORTANT THREAD: The more we learn about the Trump admin adding a controversial citizenship question, and its later attempts to hide the true motivation behind the question, the more disturbing it becomes.

It is nothing short of a cover up, and it’s unraveling before our eyes.

We’ve always known the Commerce Dept’s excuse for adding the question—claiming it was needed to enforce the Voting Rights Act—was laughable.

When I asked Sec. Wilbur Ross about the question’s origins in May 2018, he testified DOJ was “the one” who made the initial request.

We’ve since learned Ross’s testimony was BLATANTLY FALSE. It earned him 4 Pinocchios. Ross began pushing DOJ to “request” the question in early 2017.

And he did so at the urging of none other than voter-suppression guru Kris Kobach. Here’s a thread laying out the evidence:

https://twitter.com/SenatorLeahy/status/1113823954660134914

Then last April, in a profile in courage, Ross skipped his annual Appropriations oversight hearing before I could question him about his false testimony. Here’s what I had to say about that then:

Fast forward to today: The Justice and Commerce Depts have either stonewalled or dragged their feet in the face of congressional attempts to get answers. But we’re still discovering just how Orwellian and nefarious the Trump admin’s efforts are through outside litigation.

The Trump admin absurdly claims adding the question would actually help minorities.

Yet new evidence from the census litigation reveals the effort was at the behest of a Republican operative who explicitly claimed “REPUBLICANS AND NON-HISPANIC WHITES” would benefit politically.

The operative—a partisan gerrymandering expert—not only provided the Trump admin with the true motivation behind adding the question, he also helped CONCOCT THE PRETEXT: He helped “ghostwrite” a draft DOJ letter requesting the question be added.

The operative’s fingerprints were all over the partisan push to add a citizenship question. A paragraph he wrote providing the Voting Rights Act pretext was included VERBATIM in a letter that Commerce proposed DOJ send back to Commerce as justification.

The Trump admin’s stated rationale that adding a citizenship question would help to protect minority voting rights is not only wrong, it is the EXACT OPPOSITE OF WHAT THEY KNEW WOULD HAPPEN.

In the next two weeks SCOTUS will decide whether to accept the Trump admin’s ludicrous pretext at face value. Doing so in the face of such overwhelming evidence of their true motivations would do lasting damage to the credibility of the Court, not to mention to minority voters.

There is a reason why ALL THREE FEDERAL JUDGES who have considered this issue found that the Trump admin offered no legitimate rationale to support adding the question and it would depress response rates IN VIOLATION OF THE LAW.
finance.yahoo.com/news/third-fed…

Facts must still matter. Even if one thinks it’s OK to gerrymander districts to advantage one particular political party—and I certainly do not, no matter the party—this administration should never be able to validate such actions with a blatant lie.