Kobach discussed citizenship question with 2016 Trump campaign
June 7, 201911:39 PM ET
HANSI LO WANG
More than a year before the Trump administration formally asked the Census Bureau to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, Kris Kobach discussed including the question with officials during President Trump's 2016 election campaign.
Kobach disclosed the latest insight into the behind-the-scenes discussions about the hotly contested census question during an interview earlier this week as part of a House Oversight and Reform Committee investigation into the question. Staffers for the committee's Democrats released transcript excerpts on Friday.
The revelation pushes the origins of the question within the administration back to as early as the last presidential race. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the Census Bureau and approved adding the question, previously testified to Congress that the Justice Department "initiated" the request for the question in December 2017. Ross later backtracked in a court filing, saying he began considering the question "soon after" he was appointed in February 2017, while noting that "other senior Administration officials had previously raised" the issue.
In his interview with House oversight committee staffers, Kobach also confirmed that shortly after the president's inauguration in January 2017, he met with Trump about the issue, as The Kansas City Star first reported. Kobach said he also discussed it with Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist and Reince Priebus, the president's former chief of staff ...
https://www.npr.org/2019/06/07/730756245/kris-kobach-discussed-census-citizenship-question-with-2016-trump-campaign
