In March, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was asked by New York Democratic Rep. Grace Meng whether or not anyone from the White House had discussed the addition of a racist citizenship question to the 2020 U.S. census form. At the time, in front of the House Appropriations Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Subcommittee, Ross said he was “not aware of any such” discussion. On Thursday, compelled by numerous lawsuits, in a second revelation during discovery, Wilbur Ross remembered not only that did he talk with then White House advisor Steve Bannon about the question, but that he was directed by Bannon to discuss the matter with bigot, and current candidate for governor of Kansas, Kris Kobach. Commerce Department spokesman Kevin Manning says that while Ross now remembers this, he didn’t actually lie when he … lied.
"In testimony with Rep. Meng, Secretary Ross was responding to a question about an RNC campaign email, not a direct question about the citizenship question," Manning wrote. "He was in fact looking at the RNC email that the Congresswoman provided him during the hearing as he was responding to Rep. Meng's question."
Rep. Meng told NPR she isn’t buying this bullshit sandwich.
"It was pretty clear that I was asking about the addition of this question," the congresswoman says. "It's very hurtful to our country and the bipartisan process that we as Congress members and the American public believe so highly in that he would lie not just once but multiple times about communications that he had."
Ross’s lie is compounded by the fact that he told the Committee that the initiator of the citizenship question was the Department of Justice, and was meant to help with protecting citizens under the Voting Rights Act. However, the same discovery process that’s awoken Ross’s feeble memory has also thrown Ross’s timeline out of whack, as his lawyers now state that Ross “discussed the possible reinstatement of a citizenship question on the 2020 decennial census with Attorney General Sessions in the Spring of 2017 and at subsequent times.”
That means he lied about who “initiated” the question, subsequently lied about who he discussed the question with, and now wants us all to believe that he was answering another question that he was not being asked, that happened to have answers that fit perfectly into a response to another question at the time.
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