House oversight chairman cites 'massive' obstruction by US President Trump, Barr

WASHINGTON: The Democratic chairperson of the US House Oversight Committee accused the Trump administration of a “massive, unprecedented, and growing pattern of obstruction” for ordering federal employees not to comply with congressional investigations.

“Both President Trump and Attorney General [William] Barr are now openly ordering federal employees to ignore congressional subpoenas and simply not show up — without any assertion of a valid legal privilege,” US Representative Elijah Cummings said in a statement.

The Justice Department on Wednesday rebuffed the House Oversight and Reform Committee, which had sought to interview an official involved in the Trump administration’s decision to put a citizenship question on the 2020 US Census.

The department said John Gore, a deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division, would not participate in a deposition scheduled for Thursday if he could not have a Justice Department lawyer at his side. The committee had offered to allow a lawyer to sit in a different room.

Cummings said the subpoena issued to Gore was adopted on a bipartisan basis and that there was no privilege asserted by the White House or Justice Department that would preclude him from appearing.

“This is a massive, unprecedented, and growing pattern of obstruction,” Cummings said, warning the federal employees to “think very carefully about their own legal interests” in refusing to comply with the panel’s requests.