The Department of Justice is requesting the court punish Mr. Navarro for refusing to respond to the Jan. 6 committee’s subpoena.
The U.S. Department of Justice is seeking a year-long prison term along with fines for former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro for his criminal conviction related to avoiding a subpoena request from the Jan. 6 committee.
In September, a federal court jury convicted Mr. Navarro of two misdemeanor counts for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena to testify in front of the Jan. 6 committee and provide certain requested documents.
In a Jan. 18 memo submitted to the U.S. District Court of D.C., DOJ prosecutors alleged that Mr. Navarro “thumbed his nose at Congressional authority” with his refusal to comply with the subpoena. Instead of abiding by the Congressional request on a matter of “national importance,” Mr. Navarro “like the rioters at the Capitol, put politics, not country, first, and stonewalled Congress’s investigation.”
“The Defendant chose allegiance to former President Donald Trump over the rule of law even after being apprised that executive privilege would not excuse his default. For his sustained, deliberate contempt of Congress, the Defendant should be sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for each count—the top end of the applicable United States Sentencing Guidelines’ range—and fined $200,000.”
Mr. Navarro defied his Congressional subpoena under the argument that his communications with President Trump and with presidential staff were protected under executive privilege.
Executive privilege is the power granted to the president and other officials from his executive branch to withhold confidential information from the courts and legislative branch. The power is rooted in the separation of power doctrine which splits the American government into the three branches of legislative, judicial, and executive.
During a court hearing in August, Mr. Navarro said that President Trump made it “very clear” their conversations were covered by executive privilege. However, the judge ruled there was no sufficient evidence to confirm this.
In the Jan. 18 memo, prosecutors accused Mr. Navarro of cloaking his “bad-faith strategy of defiance and contempt behind baseless, unfounded invocations of executive privilege and immunity that could not and would never apply to his situation.”
