But then Trump said no. They would come back with another explanation, so I thought that meant the DoJ lawyers would try again. But this op-ed by Washington Post editorial writer, Greg Sargent, tells another story -- one of apparent disagreement within the DoJ, so that now Trump has gone to outside lawyers to argue his case.
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"Extraordinary new details are emerging about President Trump’s efforts to rig the census to benefit the Republican Party — and those details provide an occasion to take stock of William P. Barr’s role as hidden enabler of the president’s deepening corruption.
"We are now seeing Trump’s attorney general assume this role on multiple fronts — and we are only beginning to glimpse the damage that could result from all of it.
"The Justice Department just announced that it will swap out the lawyers who are representing the administration in the legal battle over the effort to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census. This battle continues because Trump ordered the administration to keep fighting to add the question, even though officials had surrendered after the Supreme Court ruled against it.
"As The Post reports, the change in the legal team might signal 'legal or ethical concerns' about Trump’s handling of the affair. One source said such concerns were harbored by some 'career attorneys.'
"It gets worse. A Justice Department lawyer tells the New York Times that due to the switch, no lawyers from the division that defends administration policies in court — the federal programs branch — will be working on the case.
"The Times adds that the move strongly suggests that career lawyers 'decided to quit a case that at the least seemed to lack a legal basis,' or worse, could force them to defend statements that 'could well turn out to be untrue.'
Tellingly, the Times reports that those career lawyers appear to have concluded that 'there were difficulties in finding a new justification' for the citizenship question 'that would not seem invented out of whole cloth.'
"Translation: The lawyers knew they couldn’t come up with another fake rationale to replace the last fake rationale, without it being blindingly obvious that the new one is just as fake as the last one.
"The last rationale offered by the Commerce Department — which oversees the census — was that the question will help enforce the Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court ruled that this rationale was a “contrived” pretext — that is, fake. . . ."
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Of course, it's obvious to the Court, as it is to anyone looking at the case, that the whole thing is contrived. It's a scare tactic to discourage anyone who is not a citizen from participating in the count. Non-citizen residents are supposed to be counted in the census; it's officially a count of who lives here, not a citizenship count.
Understandably in today's anti-immigrant climate, people are afraid that they will be picked up and deported if they participate in the count. The object is to sow confusion and fear, in order to lower the count and give the Republican Party an advantage in all the districting and appropriations that are based on the census.
All you need to know is that this idea was initially pushed by Steve Bannon and Kris Kobach, "two of Trump's most virulently anti-immigrant advisers," as Greg Sargents puts it.
So now Trump will try some more pliant lawyers to see if they can come up with another fake rationale that just might squeak through the courts -- or at least buy him so more time to sew chaos.
Ralph
PS: Speaking of compliant lawyers: Late yesterday, Attorney General Barr issued a statement saying he believes there is a way to include the question, without getting court approval -- or at least that's what he seemed to indicate. He did not detail how it would be done.
I'm afraid the damage has already been done now -- making people afraid to participate in the census. Who would trust the Trump administration . . . no matter what they say now, and risk being deported?
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