Abuse of Power

"Congress must move quickly to convene televised public hearings so Americans can hear directly from Special Counsel Robert Mueller," said Common Cause President Karen Hobert Flynn. "Congress and the American people must learn about the truth about Russia's attacks on the 2016 presidential race."

"Despite the ‘see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’ spin from the Attorney General, we cannot overlook the fact that the investigation has already led to 199 criminal charges, 37 indictments or guilty pleas, and 5 prison sentences," Karen Hobert Flynn, the president of Common Cause, noted in a press release after Barr's press conference.

Americans deserve know the full truth and tonight we are taking to the streets to demand it. A four-page whitewash from the Attorney General is not enough. We have a right to know everything that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation uncovered about Russian attacks on our democracy in that nation’s wide-ranging effort to aid Donald Trump in 2016. The vital importance of releasing the full report publicly is hammered home by new reports that members of the special counsel’s team were shocked and frustrated that Attorney General Bill Barr has significantly downplayed their findings which they describe as “alarming and significant.” We need to know because we need to know that our elected representatives are doing what is necessary to safeguard our democracy from ongoing attacks by hostile foreign powers. The full report and underlying documentation must be released to the American people.

"People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook." President Richard Nixon famously said this line during the Watergate scandal in 1973, and Americans deserve to know what President Donald Trump is trying to hide by continually refusing to release his tax returns.

Today, Common Cause, along with former elected and appointed Republican officials, filed an amicus brief in the United States Supreme Court in Commerce v. New York challenging the addition of the citizenship question to the 2020 census. The government watchdog also launched the next phase in its “Count Me In 2020 Campaign” for a fair and accurate census. Common Cause called on its 1.12 million members to celebrate April 1, 2019 as a Census Day of Action by fighting for adequate census funding from our federal and state governments and getting involved in grassroots organizations who are dedicated to ensuring that everyone gets counted. Members across the country are calling their representatives in Congress to urge them to support the Census IDEA Act and to fully fund the 2020 census.