Former Trump White House official Peter Navarro has been indicted on two counts of criminal contempt of Congress after refusing to comply with a subpoena from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, the Justice Department announced Friday, reports The Washington Post.
Former Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro charged with contempt of Congress (The Washington Post)
Excerpt from The Washington Post: Navarro, 72, is charged with one contempt count involving his refusal to appear for a deposition and another involving his refusal to produce documents to the committee, according to the U.S. attorney’s office for Washington. The charges against Navarro, the second former Trump adviser to face criminal charges in connection with rebuffing the committee, mirror those sought by the House and filed by U.S. prosecutors in November against former White House adviser Stephen K. Bannon, after he too refused to appear or produce documents to the committee.
Mr. Navarro revealed this week that FBI agents had served him a subpoena demanding that he testify before a grand jury this week about efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Mr. Navarro was taken into custody Friday morning and couldn’t immediately be reached for comment, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Peter Navarro, Former Trump Official, Indicted on Contempt Charges (The Wall Street Journal)
Excerpt from The Wall Street Journal: The House in April voted to hold Mr. Navarro in contempt for failing to respond to a subpoena for documents and testimony sought by the Jan. 6 committee. Mr. Navarro cited executive privilege in declining to show up for the depositions. Mr. Navarro is of interest to the committee because he issued reports promoting baseless claims of election fraud and laid out in a book a strategy for getting then-Vice President Mike Pence to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in an effort to buy time to investigate the election results in six battleground states.
The indictment marks the first criminal charges related to the Jan. 6 investigation against a person who was serving in Trump’s White House during the former president’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results, reports Politico.
Steve Bannon, who left the White House in 2017 and similarly refused to comply with a select committee subpoena, was charged last year with two counts of contempt and is set to go on trial in July.
Navarro indicted for contempt of Congress after defying Jan. 6 panel subpoena (Politico)
Excerpt from Politico: The contempt case is the latest effort by DOJ to bolster the work of the select committee. And it represents another test of the department’s handling of a politically explosive case — one that intersects with congressional subpoenas, executive privilege and longstanding DOJ internal precedent centered on White House advisers’ immunity from compelled testimony.
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