Rep. Tlaib raises possibility of investigation into Trump administration handling of U.S. Census

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., tells Yahoo News National Correspondent Alexander Nazaryan that House investigations into potential wrongdoing by the Trump administration could be considered after President Trump leaves the White House. Tlaib, a member of the House Oversight Committee, says, “One of the areas that I don’t know if I could let go is regarding what happened with the U.S. Census.”

Video transcript

ALEXANDER NAZARYAN: There's a debate right now among Democrats-- do you let Trump-- and by Trump, I mean the whole administration-- should you just let them go and say good riddance, or do you investigate, potentially prosecute, and hold their feet to-- hold them accountable for everything they've done, agency and every level of government? Where do you land on that?

RASHIDA TLAIB: So for me, as a member of the House Oversight Committee, I can tell you, one of the areas that I don't know if I could let go is regarding what happened with the US Census. We're already hearing reports of information that was falsified. Resources weren't dispensed in communities like Detroit.

I'm [? sending ?] a House Oversight committee, [? led ?] on my part, to my committee members, saying, we need to investigate the fact that proxies were misused. We might have a huge undercount in communities of color, and that we need to fully investigate.

So some of the actions by the current administration are things that we might have to live with for over a decade, and we can't sit back and allow that to continue. So the census count, when it comes out-- it's something we have to live with for 10 years. Even though Trump may be gone, these are decisions and actions by the kind of administration that will hurt our residents for years to come.

So I think it's really important that we don't allow any irreparable harm from the corruption and lawlessness of this president to continue to hurt our families. So I think it's important that we prioritize based on that, because that's irreparable harm that, again, we can't afford. We can't afford our residents, especially during this pandemic, especially communities like mine that have already been neglected for far too long.