MSNBC "Hardball with Chris Matthews" - Transcript: Trump: "Trump holds campaign rally in NC."

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MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL.

In a dramatic move late today, the House of Representatives voted to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in criminal contempt of Congress for withholding subpoenaed documents from the Oversight Committee. As NBC News points out, the vote marks -- quote -- "just the second time in American history that an American attorney general had been found in criminal contempt," the first being Eric Holder seven years ago. The subpoenaed documents that Barr and Ross withheld are about the administration`s failed effort to add a citizenship question to the census, and they could reveal the president`s ulterior motive perhaps in waging that census fight. According to "The New York Times," Democrats believe -- quote -- "that the administration`s long-stated rationale for collecting the data, to better enforce the Voting Rights Act, was merely a cover for a politically motivated attempt to eliminate noncitizens from population statistics used to allocate political representation, diminishing Democratic power." Well, it comes after the Supreme Court rejected the administration`s argument that the citizenship question was necessary and that their justification seems to have been contrived."I`m joined right now by Congressman Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, who serves on the House Oversight Committee.

Congresswoman, it`s great to have you on.

REP. DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (D-FL): Thank you. Great to be with you.

MATTHEWS: Can you figure out what the Trump people were up to in including that citizenship question? What was their political dream here?

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Well, it certainly wasn`t what Secretary Ross testified under oath, which was that the sole reason, he said, that they wanted the citizenship question on the census was to enforce the Voting Rights Act. And President Trump himself basically outed Secretary Ross as a liar last week, when he said publicly that the purpose was for partisan gerrymandering. And, you know, we had two Cabinet officials defy congressional -- bipartisan congressional subpoenas. And they are -- the administration is not above the law. And so we have to use every tool at our disposal to be able to use the oversight authority that we have to get answers to the questions, because if this was really about partisan gerrymandering, if the documents that had been revealed, which we know have said that what the administration was really trying to do was to suppress Hispanic representation and make sure that brown people weren`t represented, the way they should be based on their numbers, then we had to do this.

MATTHEWS: OK. So the purpose was to scare people who have some people in the family or in the household who are undocumented not to participate, and thereby reduce the number of people being counted in that area?

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Right. There is a reason, Chris, that it`s been 70 years since a citizenship question has been on a census. And it`s -- I was at the hearing when we had Secretary Ross there. And, very clearly, we pointed out that you don`t need a citizenship question to enforce the Voting Rights Act. You don`t need -- we have smaller surveys that they do where they include it now. But the president himself said last week that it was partisan gerrymandering that was their real motive. He outed his own Cabinet secretary. And you can`t -- we have been trying to get documents. The Oversight Committee`s role is to make sure that we can get to the bottom of the motivations of the administration. That`s why our founding fathers set up three branches of government. It`s our job in Congress to get answers to questions. It`s the administration`s job to answer that.

MATTHEWS: I know. It`s legitimate, but Trump, the president, is telling Wilbur Ross, don`t participate. Don`t answer their subpoena. Don`t --ignore them, basically. That`s an amazing statement.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Look, this contempt vote allows us to -- it`s a criminal contempt resolution. And now it allows us to go to court and enforce our subpoena authority.

MATTHEWS: It`s great to have you on.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: I mean, that`s -- we have to get answers to this question.

MATTHEWS: It`s great to have you on, Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Thank you so much, Chris.

MATTHEWS: Thank you. Thank you so much for coming on.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Thank you.

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