Prosecutors say Peter Navarro — a former trade adviser to Donald Trump — should go to jail for six months for defying a subpoena from the House Jan. 6 select committee.
“The Defendant chose allegiance to former President Donald Trump over the rule of law,” argued Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Aloi in a 20-page sentencing memo submitted Thursday night.
Navarro, who will be sentenced by a federal judge next week after being convicted in September on two misdemeanor contempt of Congress charges, “thumbed his nose at Congressional authority” and would likely do so again to serve the “political interests of his allies and patrons,” Aloi argued.
The prosecutor said Navarro summarily refused to aid the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation into the causes of the violent assault at the Capitol — including efforts by Trump to subvert the 2020 election and derail the transfer of power. Navarro worked with allies in Congress on a strategy to help slow Congress’ counting of electoral votes via a strategy that he and fellow Trump ally Steve Bannon dubbed “The Green Bay Sweep.”
The Jan. 6 committee subpoenaed Navarro to discuss those efforts, but he quickly told them that his testimony was barred by executive privilege, and he declined to participate in their probe.
After the House held Navarro in contempt in April 2022, the Justice Department obtained a grand jury indictment of him for refusing to provide documents and testimony. Prosecutors said Navarro knew Trump had never actually asserted executive privilege to bar his testimony and said such an assertion would not preclude him from testifying about at least some of the subjects the committee had demanded.
President Joe Biden waived any potential claim of executive privilege by the current administration, as well.
“At no time did the Defendant provide the Committee with any evidence supporting his assertion that the former President had invoked executive privilege over the information the Committee’s subpoena sought from the Defendant, or otherwise challenge the Committee’s authority or composition,” Aloi wrote. “The Court was left with only the Defendant’s fan fiction version of what the Defendant wished or hoped the former President might have wanted but left unsaid.”
Navarro would be the second former Trump aide sentenced for defying the select committee. Bannon was convicted by a jury and sentenced to four months in 2022, though his sentence remains paused while he appeals the verdict. The House held two other witnesses — Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino — in contempt for defying the committee, but the Justice Department declined to prosecute them.