Navarro, Peter

Subterms

    Latest story

    88 Shares99 Views

    Peter Navarro’s Prosecutors Ask for 6-Month Sentence

    by

    Mr. Navarro would be the second Trump official to be sentenced for stonewalling Congress in its Jan. 6 investigation.Federal prosecutors asked on Thursday night for a sentence of six months in prison for Peter Navarro, a former White House adviser to President Donald J. Trump, for defying a subpoena from the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.Prosecutors said they were seeking a sentence at the top end of the guidelines because of his “bad-faith strategy” of “sustained, deliberate contempt of Congress.”“The defendant, like the rioters at the Capitol, put politics, not country, first, and stonewalled Congress’s investigation,” they wrote in their sentencing memo. “The defendant chose allegiance to former President Donald Trump over the rule of law.”The memo echoed the sentence recommendation for Stephen K. Bannon, who was ultimately given four months in prison for defying his own subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee. The sentencing would make Mr. Navarro the second Trump official to be sentenced for ignoring the committee’s subpoenas.Sentencing is set for Jan. 25 in Federal District Court in Washington.Mr. Navarro was convicted on two counts of contempt of Congress in September, and this week the judge presiding over the case, Amit P. Mehta, turned down a request from his lawyers to dismiss the verdict and convene a new trial. Mr. Navarro had argued that jurors were exposed to political bias while lunching outside the courthouse where demonstrators were protesting.“The evidence establishes that the jurors only interacted with each other” and a court security officer, Judge Mehta wrote in a ruling on Tuesday.Mr. Navarro’s lawyers argued that the subpoena flew in the face of the notion that a president could direct his subordinates to refuse to testify before Congress, citing executive immunity.In their own memo, they wrote that “history is replete” with people who “have refused to comply with congressional subpoenas, and Dr. Navarro’s sentence should not be disproportionate from those similarly situated individuals.”Mr. Navarro, a Harvard-trained economist and a vocal critic of China, helped devise some of the Trump administration’s most adversarial trade policies and played a role in the U.S. pandemic response. But after the 2020 presidential election, he became more focused on efforts to keep Mr. Trump in power.Mr. Navarro frequently made television appearances in which he cast doubt on the election results and peddled specious claims of voter fraud. He also documented those assertions in a report, as well as in a memoir he published after leaving the White House in which he described a strategy known as the Green Bay Sweep aimed at overturning the election results.When the committee asked Mr. Navarro to testify, he repeatedly asserted executive privilege, insisting that Mr. Trump had ordered him not to cooperate. But Judge Mehta ruled that Mr. Navarro could not raise executive privilege in his defense at trial, saying that there was no compelling evidence that Mr. Trump had ever told him to ignore the committee. More

    More stories

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Peter Navarro Convicted of Contempt of Congress Over Jan. 6 Subpoena

      by

      The verdict made Mr. Navarro the second top adviser to former President Donald J. Trump to be found guilty of contempt for defying the House committee’s investigation.Peter Navarro, a former trade adviser to President Donald J. Trump, was convicted on Thursday of two counts of criminal contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.The verdict, coming after nearly four hours of deliberation in Federal District Court in Washington, made Mr. Navarro the second top adviser of Mr. Trump’s to be found guilty in connection to the committee’s inquiry. Stephen K. Bannon, a former strategist for Mr. Trump who was convicted of the same offense last summer, faces four months in prison and remains free on appeal.Mr. Navarro, 74, stood to the side of his lawyers’ table, stroking his chin as the verdict was read aloud. Each count carries a maximum of one year in prison and a fine of up to $100,000. A hearing to determine his sentence was scheduled for January.Speaking outside the courthouse afterward, Mr. Navarro repeatedly vowed to appeal his conviction.“I am willing to go to prison to settle this issue, I’m willing to do that,” he said. “But I also know that the likelihood of me going to prison is relatively small because we are right on this issue.”The jury’s decision handed a victory to the House committee, which had sought to penalize senior members of the Trump administration who refused to cooperate with one of the chief investigations into the Capitol riot.The trial also amounted to an unusual test of congressional authority. Since the 1970s, referrals for criminal contempt of Congress have rarely resulted in the Justice Department’s bringing charges. Mr. Navarro was indicted last June on two misdemeanor counts of contempt, one for failing to appear for a deposition and another for refusing to provide documents in response to the committee’s subpoena.The rapid pace of the trial reflected, in part, the fact that the case turned on a straightforward question, whether Mr. Navarro had willfully defied lawmakers in flouting a subpoena. Even before the trial began, Judge Amit P. Mehta, who presided over the case, dealt a blow to Mr. Navarro by ruling that he could not use in court what he has publicly cast as his principal defense: that Mr. Trump personally directed him not to cooperate and that he was protected by those claims of executive privilege.Mr. Navarro, a Harvard-trained economist and a strident critic of China, devised some of the Trump administration’s most adversarial trade policies toward the country. Once the pandemic took hold, he helped coordinate the United States’s response by securing equipment like face masks and ventilators. But after the 2020 election, he became more focused on plans to keep Mr. Trump in power.Mr. Navarro was of particular interest to the committee because of his frequent television appearances in which he cast doubt on the election results and peddled specious claims of voter fraud.He also documented those assertions in a three-part report on purported election irregularities, as well as in a memoir he published after he left the White House. In the book, Mr. Navarro described a strategy he had devised with Mr. Bannon known as the Green Bay Sweep, aimed at overturning the results of the election in key swing states that had been called for Joseph R. Biden Jr.But when the committee asked Mr. Navarro to testify last February, he repeatedly insisted that Mr. Trump had ordered him not to cooperate. By asserting executive privilege, he argued, the former president had granted him immunity from Congress’s demands.The question of executive privilege prompted more than a year of legal wrangling over whether Mr. Navarro could invoke that at a time when Mr. Trump was no longer president. Judge Mehta ruled last week that Mr. Navarro could not raise executive privilege in his defense, saying that there was no compelling evidence that Mr. Trump had ever told him to ignore the committee.Asked after his verdict why he had not merely asked Mr. Trump to provide testimony that corroborated his claims, Mr. Navarro said the former president was too preoccupied with his own legal troubles.“You may have noticed that he’s fighting four different indictments in three different jurisdictions thousands of miles away, OK?” he said. “We chose not to go there.”In closing arguments on Thursday, prosecutors and defense lawyers dueled over whether Mr. Navarro’s refusal to cooperate with the committee amounted to a willful defiance of Congress, or a simple misunderstanding.“The defendant, Peter Navarro, made a choice,” said Elizabeth Aloi, a prosecutor. “He didn’t want to comply and produce documents, and he didn’t want to testify, so he didn’t.”Detailing the House committee’s correspondence with Mr. Navarro, Ms. Aloi said that even after the panel asked Mr. Navarro to explain any opposition he had to giving sworn testimony, he continued to stonewall.“The defendant chose allegiance to President Trump over compliance with the subpoena,” she said. “That is contempt. That is a crime.”Stanley Woodward Jr., a lawyer for Mr. Navarro, countered that the government had not successfully shown that Mr. Navarro’s failure to comply was anything other than “inadvertence, accident or mistake.” Mr. Woodward presented next to no evidence in Mr. Navarro’s defense and instead sought to poke holes in the government’s case that Mr. Navarro had deliberately disregarded the committee.“Where was Dr. Navarro on March 2, 2022?” Mr. Woodward asked, referring to the date that Mr. Navarro was instructed to appear before the panel.“We don’t know,” he said. “Why didn’t the government present evidence to you about where Dr. Navarro was or what he was doing?”Prosecutors also emphasized the role that Mr. Navarro’s falsehoods may have played in drawing scores of rioters to Washington to disrupt Congress’s certification of the results.That caused Mr. Woodward to bristle, telling the jury that the government was relying on emotional descriptions to tarnish Mr. Navarro’s image, rather than proving he ever intended to blow off lawmakers.Others in Mr. Trump’s inner circle cooperated with the panel in a more limited fashion and avoided criminal charges.Two of Mr. Trump’s advisers, Roger J. Stone Jr. and Michael T. Flynn, appeared before the committee but declined to answer most of its questions by citing their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. Mr. Trump’s final chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and his deputy, Dan Scavino, each negotiated terms with the committee to provide documents but not testimony.During the trial, prosecutors emphasized that Mr. Navarro could have taken a similar tack. The panel had informed Mr. Navarro that if he sought to invoke privilege, he should do so in person, as well as list any documents he believed were protected.“Even if he believed he had an excuse, it does not matter,” Ms. Aloi told members of the jury moments before they left the courtroom to deliberate. “He had to comply with the subpoena no matter what, and assert any privileges in the way Congress set forth.” More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Prosecutors Rest Case Against Peter Navarro in Contempt Trial

      by

      The defense also rested, with closing arguments expected to begin Thursday morning. The fast clip of the trial suggested that the jury could deliberate shortly after.Prosecutors rested their case on Wednesday in the criminal trial of Peter Navarro, who served as President Donald J. Trump’s trade adviser, saying he willfully ignored lawmakers in refusing to appear last year before the House committee investigating the Capitol attack.After delivering their opening statement, government lawyers took just three hours to introduce all their evidence, arguing that convicting Mr. Navarro revolved around one straightforward question: Did he show contempt for Congress when he disregarded the committee’s subpoena for documents and testimony?“This case is just about a guy who didn’t show up for his testimony? Yes, this case is that simple,” a prosecutor, John Crabb Jr., said in Federal District Court in Washington. “But this case is also that important — we are a nation of laws, and Mr. Navarro acted like he was above the law.”The defense also rested, calling no witnesses and presenting no evidence, with closing arguments expected to begin Thursday morning. The fast clip of the trial suggested that the jury could deliberate shortly after.Mr. Navarro, 74, faces two counts of contempt of Congress, making him the second top official of Mr. Trump’s to face criminal charges after declining to cooperate with the House committee. If convicted, Mr. Navarro could face up to a year in jail and a fine of up to $100,000 for each count.Stephen K. Bannon, who worked as a strategist and adviser to Mr. Trump in the early months of his administration, was also indicted on two counts of contempt of Congress after defying a subpoena from the committee. He was convicted last summer and sentenced to four months in prison, though he remains free while his appeal is pending.Lawyers for Mr. Navarro, limited in what defense they could make in court, sought to paint him as a diligent policy adviser who got caught up in fraught legal negotiations with the Jan. 6 committee.One of his lawyers, Stanley Woodward Jr., said that the Justice Department’s suggestion that Mr. Navarro was a critical witness to the panel’s investigation was overstated, describing prosecutors’ opening statement as theatrical.“It’s like one of those movies where you get nothing after the preview,” he said, while Mr. Navarro, who stood behind his lawyers’ table, paced back and forth and listened intently.The prosecution on Wednesday focused on correspondence between Mr. Navarro and the Jan. 6 committee in February last year, calling as witnesses three staff members on the panel who helped draft and serve the subpoena to Mr. Navarro.David Buckley, the staff director for the committee, and Daniel George, a senior investigative counsel, testified that the panel came to view Mr. Navarro as one of the more prominent public officials sowing doubt about the integrity of the 2020 election.The committee was particularly interested in a three-part report Mr. Navarro wrote claiming widespread voter fraud and a memoir he published after he left the White House.In the book, Mr. Navarro laid out a strategy he had devised with Mr. Bannon known as the Green Bay Sweep, intended to reject the results of the election in key swing states that had been called for Joseph R. Biden Jr. He described it as “our last, best chance to snatch a stolen election from the Democrats’ jaws of deceit.”But Mr. Navarro rebuffed their requests for an interview with the committee, both men testified.Mr. George, who formally notified Mr. Navarro about the subpoena, said that before he had even sent the subpoena itself, which included a list of documents the committee was seeking, Mr. Navarro responded minutes later with an email that simply stated, “executive privilege.”“I didn’t make much of that because we hadn’t communicated to him what we wanted to speak about,” Mr. George said.Mr. Navarro and his lawyers were left to mount a circuitous defense after the judge presiding over the case, Amit P. Mehta, rejected their main argument before the trial began: that Mr. Trump, who was no longer president at the time, had directed him to ignore the subpoena and that he was shielded by executive privilege. Mr. Navarro has consistently maintained outside court that he was merely acting on the orders of Mr. Trump, who Mr. Navarro says had expressly asked him and other senior advisers not to cooperate with the committee.Defense lawyers on Wednesday instead pinned blame on the House committee, saying that Mr. Navarro had referred members of the panel to Mr. Trump directly, but lawmakers did not follow up with him to confirm whether Mr. Navarro was covered by any privilege.Under cross-examination, Mr. George acknowledged that after Mr. Navarro initially responded to requests from the committee, members did not approach Mr. Trump or his lawyers to clarify whether he had expressly asked Mr. Navarro not to cooperate, citing executive privilege. More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Ex-Trump Aide Peter Navarro to Face Trial Over Defiance of Jan. 6 Panel

      by

      A federal judge allowed the trial to proceed after finding little evidence that the former president authorized Mr. Navarro to ignore a subpoena from Congress.For weeks after the 2020 election had been called, Peter Navarro, a White House adviser to President Donald J. Trump, worked closely with other senior aides to keep Mr. Trump in power for a second term.After being subpoenaed last year by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, which sought to learn more about those efforts, Mr. Navarro refused to comply, insisting that Mr. Trump had directed him not to cooperate and dismissing the subpoena as “illegal” and “unenforceable.”Now, after more than a year of legal wrangling, Mr. Navarro, 74, will defend those claims in a trial that starts Tuesday, when jury selection is expected to begin in Federal District Court in Washington. The case centers on a relatively simple question: whether he showed contempt for Congress in defying the House committee’s request for documents and testimony.The trial itself may be relatively short, and if Mr. Navarro were to be convicted on the two counts of contempt of Congress he is charged with, he could face up to a year in jail and a fine of up to $100,000 for each count.Since Mr. Navarro was indicted in June of last year, he has maintained that he is protected by the former president’s claim of executive privilege.Prosecutors intend to argue that Mr. Navarro refused of his own volition and that neither Mr. Trump nor his lawyers have confirmed whether Mr. Navarro sought or received his approval.The judge in the case, Amit P. Mehta, has already dealt a blow to Mr. Navarro, ruling that he cannot rely on executive privilege as a pillar of his defense. He refused to dismiss the case after concluding that Mr. Navarro had failed to produce convincing evidence that he and Mr. Trump ever discussed his response to Congress.Describing Mr. Navarro’s defense as “pretty weak sauce,” Judge Mehta emphasized that he had presented no written communications or even a “smoke signal” that would bolster his contention.“I still don’t know what the president said,” Judge Mehta said. “I don’t have any words from the former president.”“I don’t think anyone would disagree that we wish there was more here from President Trump,” Mr. Navarro’s lawyer, Stanley Woodward Jr., replied.Still, outside of court, Mr. Navarro has continued to frame the case as a fundamental dispute between the legislative and executive branches, calling the fight over executive privilege “open questions” in the law and pledging to appeal.Mr. Navarro is one of two Trump aides to face criminal charges after the House committee’s investigation. Stephen K. Bannon, another of Mr. Trump’s senior advisers, was convicted last summer on two counts of contempt of Congress and sentenced to four months in prison.After the 2020 election, Mr. Bannon and Mr. Navarro concocted a plan, known as the Green Bay Sweep, aimed at delaying certification of the outcome of the election. The strategy involved persuading Republican lawmakers to halt the counting of Electoral College votes on Jan. 6 by repeatedly challenging the results in various swing states.When the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack issued a subpoena, Mr. Bannon similarly refused to comply.Others in Mr. Trump’s inner circle were less combative in resisting the panel’s efforts.Two of Mr. Trump’s advisers, Roger J. Stone Jr. and Michael T. Flynn, ultimately appeared before the committee but declined to answer most of its questions by citing their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. Mr. Trump’s final chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and his deputy, Dan Scavino, negotiated the terms of their responses to subpoenas, providing documents but not testimony. None of the four men faced criminal charges.The filing of charges against Mr. Navarro was widely seen as proof that the Justice Department was willing to act aggressively against one of Mr. Trump’s top allies as the House scrutinized the actions of the former president and his advisers and aides in the events leading up to and during the Capitol attack.The trial could also shed new light on Mr. Navarro’s communications with the White House at key moments during Mr. Trump’s final days in power.One possible witness for the defense is Liz Harrington, a communication aide for Mr. Trump who helped spread false claims of election irregularities in the months after the 2020 election. Ms. Harrington had been set to testify last week about Mr. Navarro’s claims of executive privilege, but could instead provide written testimony about the extent of Mr. Navarro’s contact with Mr. Trump and his aides.Alan Feuer More

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Navarro Indicted as Justice Dept. Opts Not to Charge Meadows and Scavino

      by

      The House had recommended contempt charges against all three Trump White House aides over their stonewalling of its Jan. 6 inquiry.A federal grand jury on Friday indicted Peter Navarro, a White House adviser to former President Donald J. Trump, for failing to comply with a subpoena from the House committee investigating the Capitol attack, even as the Justice Department declined to charge Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino Jr., two other top officials who have also refused to cooperate.The indictment against Mr. Navarro, handed up in Federal District Court in Washington, marked the first time that an official who served in Mr. Trump’s White House during the events of Jan. 6, 2021, has been charged in connection with the investigation into the attack.Prosecutors charged Mr. Navarro, 72, with what amounted to a misdemeanor process crime for having failed to appear for a deposition or provide documents to congressional investigators in response to a subpoena issued by the House committee on Feb. 9. The indictment includes two counts of criminal contempt of Congress that each carry a maximum sentence of a year in prison, as well as a fine of up to $100,000.The Justice Department has declined to take similar steps against Mr. Meadows, Mr. Trump’s final chief of staff, and Mr. Scavino, the deputy chief of staff, according to people familiar with prosecutors’ decision and a letter reviewed by The New York Times informing the top House counsel of it.“Based on the individual facts and circumstances of their alleged contempt, my office will not be initiating prosecutions for criminal contempt as requested in the referral against Messrs. Meadows and Scavino,” Matthew M. Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, wrote to Douglas N. Letter, the general counsel of the House, on Friday. “My office’s review of each of the contempt referrals arising from the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation is complete.”Both Mr. Meadows and Mr. Scavino — who were deeply involved in the effort to overturn the 2020 election — engaged in weeks of negotiations with the committee’s lawyers, and Mr. Meadows turned over more than 9,000 documents to the panel, before the House voted to charge them with contempt.By contrast, Mr. Navarro and his ally Stephen K. Bannon, who has also been charged with contempt, fought the committee’s subpoenas from Day 1 and never entered into negotiations.Asked for comment, Mr. Meadows’s lawyer, George J. Terwilliger III, said, “The result speaks for itself.”A spokesman for the Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A lawyer for Mr. Scavino declined to comment.In a statement, the leaders of the committee applauded Mr. Navarro’s indictment but urged the Justice Department to provide “greater clarity” on its rationale for not charging Mr. Meadows or Mr. Scavino.“We find the decision to reward Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino for their continued attack on the rule of law puzzling,” said the leaders, Representatives Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, and Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming. “Mr. Meadows and Mr. Scavino unquestionably have relevant knowledge about President Trump’s role in the efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the events of Jan. 6.”For his part, Mr. Navarro appeared in court on Friday afternoon, speaking on his own behalf and telling a federal magistrate judge that the congressional subpoena he was served with was “illegal” and “unenforceable.”At the court hearing, he cast himself as a victim of an unfair system run by Democrats bent on destroying him and Mr. Trump.“There are bigger things at play than whether I go to prison,” Mr. Navarro said. “And that’s why I’m standing here.”He also complained that although he lives close to F.B.I. headquarters, federal agents arrested him at the door of an airplane as he was on his way to Nashville.“This is not the way that America is supposed to function,” he went on, adding, “They’re playing hardball.”A former White House trade adviser who undertook extensive efforts to keep Mr. Trump in office after the 2020 election, Mr. Navarro is the second high-ranking former presidential aide to be charged with contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the committee. Mr. Bannon, a former top aide to Mr. Trump, was indicted in November on similar charges.The indictment against Mr. Navarro came nearly two months after the House voted mostly along party lines to recommend criminal charges against him. The same vote also recommended a contempt indictment against Mr. Scavino.The House voted in January to recommend that Mr. Meadows be charged with contempt.“Upon receiving each referral, my office conducted a thorough investigation and analysis of the individualized facts and circumstances surrounding each contempt allegation to determine whether to initiate a criminal prosecution,” Mr. Graves wrote to Mr. Letter. “Those investigations and analyses were conducted by and supervised by experienced prosecutors. Each referral has been analyzed individually based on the facts and circumstances of the alleged contempt developed through my office’s investigation.”The House subpoena that Mr. Navarro received sought documents and testimony about an effort to overturn the election that he had billed as the “Green Bay Sweep.” The plan called for lawmakers in key swing states to team with Republican members of Congress and Vice President Mike Pence to reject the results that showed Joseph R. Biden Jr. had won the election and give Mr. Trump the victory.The subpoena also mentioned a call Mr. Navarro participated in with Mr. Trump and his lawyers on Jan. 2, 2021, in which they attempted to persuade hundreds of state lawmakers to join the effort.Mr. Navarro also wrote a 36-page report claiming election fraud as part of what he called an “immaculate deception” that he said he made sure was distributed to Republican members of Congress.There is no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, and the Jan. 6 committee has described the claims in Mr. Navarro’s report as having been “discredited in public reporting, by state officials and courts.”The indictment comes days after Mr. Navarro filed a lawsuit against the House committee, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, in which he questioned the authority and validity of the inquiry.In the lawsuit, Mr. Navarro also revealed that he had recently received another subpoena, this one from a federal grand jury in Washington. That subpoena sought documents from him related to any communications he may have had with Mr. Trump or his lawyers.Mr. Navarro has claimed that because Mr. Trump invoked executive privilege to bar the disclosure of information requested by the Jan. 6 investigators, he is prevented from complying with the subpoena. Prosecutors were most likely interested in how closely Mr. Navarro was in touch with the former president or his lawyers in order to assess that defense against the contempt of Congress charge.“The executive privilege invoked by President Trump is not mine to waive,” Mr. Navarro has repeatedly said.Mr. Bannon has also sought to argue that he does not have to comply with his own subpoena because of Mr. Trump’s claims of executive privilege. A trial in his case is tentatively scheduled for July.Mr. Bannon is arguing that the committee is not a legitimate investigative body but a politically motivated one, citing the fact that two of its members have written books that presuppose who is to blame for the Capitol riot even though the inquiry has not ended.While contempt of Congress charges are rarely brought, the cases filed against Mr. Navarro and Mr. Bannon suggest that the Justice Department is willing to take a tough stance against at least some of Mr. Trump’s former aides who have stonewalled the committee’s efforts.The decision not to charge Mr. Meadows and Mr. Scavino indicates that there are limits to that approach, particularly when it comes to top White House officials who could more plausibly argue that their communications with the president were privileged.The charges against Mr. Navarro come at a politically sensitive moment: one week before the committee is poised to begin a series of high-profile hearings on its findings.Mr. Navarro has taken an aggressive stance toward the committee, especially with regard to its Democratic members. In his lawsuit, he vowed payback against Democrats should Republicans retake the White House and Congress in 2024.“If I’m not dead or in prison,” he wrote, “I will lead the charge.”At his court hearing, Mr. Navarro expressed similar disdain for the legal proceeding.A federal magistrate judge, Zia M. Faruqui, released him from custody with a standard set of conditions, mostly simple restrictions on Mr. Navarro’s travel privileges, noting that he understood the defendant was frustrated by them.Mr. Navarro rejected the idea that he was frustrated.“I am, let us say, disappointed in our republic,” he declared.Maggie Haberman More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Peter Navarro, Former Trump Aide, Gets Grand Jury Subpoena in Jan. 6 Inquiry

      by

      The subpoena, the latest indication of an expanding inquiry by federal prosecutors, seeks Mr. Navarro’s testimony and any records he has related to the attack on the Capitol last year.Peter Navarro, who as a White House adviser to President Donald J. Trump worked to keep Mr. Trump in office after his defeat in the 2020 election, disclosed on Monday that he has been summoned to testify on Thursday to a federal grand jury and to provide prosecutors with any records he has related to the attack on the Capitol last year, including “any communications” with Mr. Trump.The subpoena to Mr. Navarro — which he said the F.B.I. served at his house last week — seeks his testimony about materials related to the buildup to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and signals that the Justice Department investigation may be progressing to include activities of people in the White House.Mr. Navarro revealed the existence of the subpoena in a draft of a lawsuit he said he is preparing to file against the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Matthew M. Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.Mr. Navarro, who plans to represent himself in the suit, is hoping to persuade a federal judge to block the subpoena, which he calls the “fruit of the poisonous tree.”The Justice Department and the U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment.The grand jury’s subpoena, Mr. Navarro said, builds on a separate subpoena issued to him in February by the committee. That subpoena sought documents and testimony about an effort to overturn the election nicknamed the “Green Bay Sweep,” and a Jan. 2, 2021, call that Mr. Navarro participated in with Mr. Trump and his lawyers in which they attempted to persuade hundreds of state lawmakers to join the effort.Mr. Navarro has refused to cooperate with the committee. He was found in contempt of Congress, and the House referred the contempt case to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution. In his draft lawsuit, he called the committee’s subpoena “illegal and unenforceable.”Mr. Navarro said the grand jury subpoena was directly related to the contempt of Congress referral. Asked if he planned to comply and appear on Thursday to testify, Mr. Navarro responded, “T.B.D.”The subpoena is the latest sign the Justice Department’s investigation into the attack has moved beyond the pro-Trump rioters who stormed the Capitol. Federal prosectors have charged more than 800 people in connection with the attack.The subpoena sent last week to Mr. Navarro is the first known to have been issued in connection to the department’s Jan. 6 investigations to someone who worked in the Trump White House. But it follows others issued to people connected to various strands of the sprawling investigation of the Capitol attack and its prelude.In April, Ali Alexander, a prominent “Stop the Steal” organizer, revealed that he had been served with his own grand jury subpoena, asking for records about people who organized, spoke at or provided security for pro-Trump rallies in Washington after the election, including Mr. Trump’s incendiary event near the White House on Jan. 6.Mr. Alexander’s subpoena also sought records about members of the executive or legislative branches who may have helped to plan or execute the rallies, or who tried to “obstruct, influence, impede or delay” the certification of the 2020 presidential election.Last week, word emerged that the same grand jury, sitting in Washington, had more recently issued a different set of subpoenas requesting information about the role that a group of lawyers close to Mr. Trump may have had played in a plan create alternate slates of pro-Trump electors in key swing states that were won by Joseph R. Biden Jr.The lawyers named in the subpoena included Mr. Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani; Jenna Ellis, who worked with Mr. Giuliani; John Eastman, one of the former president’s chief legal advisers during the postelection period; and Kenneth Chesebro, who wrote a pair of memos laying out the details of the plan.Those subpoenas also requested information about any members of the Trump campaign who may been involved with the alternate elector scheme and about several Republican officials in Georgia who took part in it, including David Shafer, the chairman of the Georgia Republican Party.Mr. Navarro’s subpoena, by his own account, was issued by a different grand jury.In the draft of the suit he said he intends to file, he argues that only Mr. Trump can authorize him to testify. He asks a judge to instruct Mr. Graves, the U.S. attorney in Washington, to negotiate his appearance with Mr. Trump. Mr. Navarro cites Mr. Trump’s invocation of executive privilege over materials related to the attack on the Capitol.“The executive privilege invoked by President Trump is not mine or Joe Biden’s to waive,” Mr. Navarro writes. “Rather, as with the committee, the U.S. attorney has constitutional and due process obligations to negotiate my appearance.”An effort by Mr. Trump to block release of White House materials related to the Jan. 6 attack on the grounds of executive privilege was rejected by a federal appeals court in January, and the Supreme Court denied Mr. Trump’s request for a stay of the decision.Mr. Navarro, who helped coordinate the Trump administration’s pandemic response through his role overseeing the Defense Production Act, has insisted that the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 was not part of the plans he backed, which he said included having Vice President Mike Pence reject electors for Mr. Biden when Congress met in a joint session to formally count them.In a book, Mr. Navarro wrote that the idea for the “Green Bay Sweep” was for Mr. Pence to be the “quarterback” of the plan and “put certification of the election on ice for at least another several weeks while Congress and the various state legislatures involved investigate all of the fraud and election irregularities.”Mr. Navarro also wrote a 36-page report claiming election fraud as part of what he called an “Immaculate Deception.” In an interview with The New York Times, he said he relied on “thousands of affidavits” from Mr. Giuliani, and Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York police commissioner, to help produce the report, which claimed there “may well have been a coordinated strategy to effectively stack the election deck against the Trump-Pence ticket.”There is no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, and the Jan. 6 committee described the claims in Mr. Navarro’s report as having been “discredited in public reporting, by state officials and courts.”Mr. Navarro said that he made sure Republican members of Congress received a copy of his report and that more than 100 members of Congress had signed on to the plans. (Ultimately, 147 Republican members of Congress objected to certifying at least one state for Mr. Biden.)An aide to Mr. Navarro was also in contact with a group of Trump allies who were pushing for the former president to order the seizure of voting machines. More

    • 163 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      House Votes to Find Scavino and Navarro in Contempt in Jan. 6 Inquiry

      by

      The vote was mostly along party lines to recommend that the Justice Department charge Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino Jr. with criminal contempt of Congress for defying subpoenas.The House of Representatives voted to recommend that the Justice Department charge Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino Jr. with criminal contempt of Congress for defying subpoenas issued by the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesWASHINGTON — The House on Wednesday voted to recommend criminal contempt of Congress charges against Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino Jr., two close allies of former President Donald J. Trump, after the pair defied subpoenas from the special committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.The mostly party-line vote of 220 to 203 referred contempt charges to the Justice Department, calling for prosecutions of Mr. Navarro, a former top White House adviser, and Mr. Scavino Jr., a former deputy chief of staff. It came as congressional investigators have grown increasingly frustrated with some of Mr. Trump’s staunchest supporters who have refused to meet with the panel or turn over a single page of evidence to the committee as it digs into the worst assault on the Capitol since the War of 1812.“We have two people who are flagrantly, brazenly defying the authority of the House of Representatives of the United States,” said Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the committee. He said the men had “nothing but excuses for their noncompliance — excuses you would not accept from a teenage child.”Only two Republicans, Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, both members of the investigative committee, voted for the charges. The rest of their party refused to support the move.Dozens of Republicans lined up on the floor of the House on Wednesday to demand a change of topic, trying to force a vote on immigration legislation in line with their efforts to use problems at the border as a political weapon against Democrats ahead of midterm congressional elections.After that failed, Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and the minority leader, attacked the investigation in a floor speech as a “political show trial” and accused the panel of bullying the men and trampling on their civil rights.“Let me be clear: The riot on Jan. 6 was wrong. But make no mistake: the Democrats’ response is also wrong,” Mr. McCarthy said, adding, “Democrats are using the power of the federal government to jail their political opponents.”Mr. Raskin shot back that Republicans were using “circus antics” to try to slow down the vote with a “conga line” of lawmakers queued up on the floor while they skipped out on their committee assignments.Dan Scavino Jr., a former deputy chief of staff to Mr. Trump, addressed the Republican National Convention in 2020.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesHe accused the Republicans of “slavishly” following Mr. Trump like “sycophants,” instead of joining efforts to investigate the deadly attack on the Capitol that left more than 150 police officers injured.A contempt of Congress charge carries a penalty of up to a year in jail and a maximum fine of $100,000. The House vote steered the matter to the Justice Department, which now must decide whether to charge the two men.Representative Jim Banks, Republican of Indiana, said the stakes of potential jail time were too high, and noted the vote would mean that four Trump White House aides would face criminal referrals from the committee.“Mr. Scavino has two boys. He’s a good dad,” Mr. Banks said.Ms. Cheney called the vote “sad” and “tragic,” but said the committee was left with no other choice after some in her own party had abandoned the truth for fealty to Mr. Trump.“So many in my own party are refusing to address the constitutional crisis and the challenge we face,” she said.The Jan. 6 committee laid out its arguments against Mr. Navarro and Mr. Scavino in a 34-page report that detailed how closely they were involved in efforts to keep Mr. Trump in power even after he lost decisively at the polls.Mr. Navarro and Mr. Scavino are among a handful of Mr. Trump’s closest allies who have refused to sit for interviews or turn over documents, even as more than 800 witnesses — including other top White House officials — have complied with the committee’s requests.In the past week, the panel has interviewed both Ivanka Trump, the president’s eldest daughter, and her husband Jared Kushner, both of whom were high-ranking White House advisers to Mr. Trump. Each sat for lengthy interviews with the committee. Neither asserted executive privilege to avoid answering the committee’s questions.Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, contrasted their approach to the hard-line stance adopted by Mr. Scavino and Mr. Navarro.“The president’s own daughter complied with the wishes of the committee,” Mr. Thompson said. “If his daughter complied with the wishes of the committee, everyone else should.”The committee said Mr. Navarro had worked with Stephen K. Bannon, another Trump ally, to carry out a plan to delay Congress’s certification of the election on Jan. 6, 2021, and ultimately to try to change the election’s outcome. Mr. Navarro has previously described this plan as the “Green Bay Sweep” and has said more than 100 members of Congress had signed on to it.Mr. Navarro also wrote a report alleging a stolen election, which was widely shared with others working to overturn the election. Mr. Navarro claimed that Mr. Trump “himself had distributed Volume 1 of the report to every member of the House and Senate” before Jan. 6.The Jan. 6 committee laid out its arguments against Mr. Navarro and Mr. Scavino in a 34-page report.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesThe committee issued a subpoena in February to Mr. Navarro, but he said he would not comply, citing Mr. Trump’s invocation of executive privilege over White House materials from his time in office.In a statement on Wednesday, Mr. Navarro insisted that the committee should have negotiated the matter with Mr. Trump, saying that “it is not my privilege to waive.”“Instead, the committee has colluded with the Biden White House in a futile effort to strip Donald Trump of executive privilege so it can coerce me into cooperating with their witch hunt,” he said. “This dog of a witch hunt won’t hunt at the Supreme Court, and I look forward to arguing the case there.”Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 5Contempt charges. More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Jan. 6 Panel Warns of Contempt Charges Against Two More Trump Allies

      by

      The House committee said it would start contempt proceedings against Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino, and pressed its case that fund-raising emails falsely asserting election fraud helped stoke the Capitol riot.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol said on Thursday that it would consider contempt of Congress charges against two more allies of former President Donald J. Trump for refusing to comply with its subpoenas.The potential charges against Peter Navarro, a former White House adviser, and Dan Scavino Jr., a former deputy chief of staff, could result in jail time and a hefty fine, and must be approved by a vote of the House. The committee said it would hold a public vote on whether to recommend the charges on Monday.The committee’s actions show how increasingly frustrated top investigators have become with some of Mr. Trump’s closest allies, some of whom have refused to sit for interviews or turn over documents even as hundreds of other witnesses — including top officials in the Trump White House — have voluntarily complied.The committee issued a subpoena in February to Mr. Navarro, who has spoken openly of his involvement in what he calls an “operation” to keep Mr. Trump in office after he lost the 2020 election. He has said he would not comply with the committee’s subpoena, citing Mr. Trump’s invocation of executive privilege over White House materials while he was in office.On Thursday, he called the committee’s announcement an “unprecedented partisan assault on executive privilege.”“If President Trump waives the privilege, I would be happy to testify. It is premature for the committee to pursue criminal charges against an individual of the highest rank within the White House for whom executive privilege undeniably applies,” Mr. Navarro said. “Until this matter has been settled at the Supreme Court, where it is inevitably headed, the committee should cease its tactics of harassment and intimidation.”The committee has sought Mr. Scavino’s testimony since September, when it issued him a subpoena. Mr. Scavino was in contact with Mr. Trump and others who planned the rallies that preceded the violence of Jan. 6, 2021, and he met with Mr. Trump on Jan. 5 to discuss how to persuade members of Congress not to certify the election for President Biden.He also promoted the Jan. 6 “March for Trump” on Twitter, encouraging people to “be a part of history,” and posted messages to Twitter from the White House that day, according to the panel.In January this year, Mr. Scavino sued Verizon seeking to stop the company from turning over his phone records to the committee. Stanley Woodward, a lawyer for Mr. Scavino, declined to comment.A contempt of Congress charge carries a penalty of up to a year in jail. A recommendation from the panel would send the matter to the full House, which would then have to vote to refer the charge to the Justice Department.The only target of the House investigation to have been criminally charged with contempt of Congress so far is Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s onetime top adviser. That case, which is tentatively set to go to trial in July, has been bogged down recently in arguments over whether Mr. Bannon can defend himself by claiming he was merely following the advice of his lawyers when he declined to respond to the committee’s subpoena.In December, the House also recommended that Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s final chief of staff, face criminal contempt of Congress charges for his own refusal to cooperate with the committee’s investigation. The Justice Department has not yet decided whether to pursue criminal charges against Mr. Meadows, who turned over thousands of documents to the committee but ultimately refused to sit for an interview.The potential contempt charges come as the committee is fending off a litany of lawsuits from witnesses seeking to block its subpoenas. In response to one such suit, the committee on Thursday laid out more of the case it is building, directly linking the storming of the Capitol to the lucrative fund-raising effort by the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign that was built on false claims that Democrats had stolen the election from Mr. Trump.In a filing in federal court in Washington, the committee gave its most detailed statement yet of why it believes the joint fund-raising effort was not just a plan to dupe donors into sending the Trump campaign and the R.N.C. millions, but also a leading cause of the mob attack on Congress.In a 57-page document, the committee outlined how, in the weeks after Mr. Trump lost the election, his campaign and the R.N.C. raked in hundreds of millions of dollars sending out fund-raising appeals that called Mr. Biden’s victory “illegitimate” and encouraged supporters to “fight,” including multiple messages sent the same day the Capitol was attacked.“There is evidence that numerous defendants charged with violations related to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and others present on the Capitol grounds that day were motivated by false claims about the election,” Douglas N. Letter, the general counsel of the House, wrote in the filing. “In fact, many defendants in pending criminal cases identified President Trump’s allegation about the ‘stolen election’ as a motivation for their activities at the Capitol.”Peter Navarro has said he would not comply with the committee’s subpoena, citing Mr. Trump’s invocation of executive privilege over White House materials while he was in office.Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesFor months, the committee’s investigators have examined whether a range of crimes were committed, including two in particular: whether there was wire fraud by Republicans who raised millions of dollars off assertions that the election was stolen, despite knowing the claims were not true, and whether Mr. Trump and his allies obstructed Congress by trying to stop the certification of electoral votes. In recent civil court filings, the committee has begun laying out some of what investigators contend is evidence of criminality.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3Requests to “rescind” the election. More

    • 125 Shares139 Views

      in Elections

      Jan. 6 Inquiry Subpoenas Navarro, Who Worked to Overturn Election

      by

      Peter Navarro, a White House adviser to former President Donald J. Trump, has written and spoken about his work on a plan to get Congress to reject the results of the 2020 election.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol issued a subpoena on Wednesday to Peter Navarro, a White House adviser to former President Donald J. Trump who was involved in what he called an “operation” to keep Mr. Trump in office after he lost the 2020 election.The subpoena was the committee’s latest attempt to obtain information about efforts underway in Mr. Trump’s White House to invalidate the election. In his book, titled “In Trump Time,” and in interviews with The New York Times and other outlets, Mr. Navarro has said that he worked with Stephen K. Bannon and other allies of Mr. Trump to develop and carry out a plan to delay Congress’s formal count of the 2020 presidential election results to buy time to change the outcome.Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, highlighted how openly and proudly Mr. Navarro has discussed those machinations, saying he “hasn’t been shy about his role in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and has even discussed the former president’s support for those plans.”Mr. Navarro has insisted that the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 was not part of his plans, which he said included having Vice President Mike Pence reject electors for Joseph R. Biden Jr. when Congress met in a joint session to formally count them.“To pull off an operation Bannon has dubbed the Green Bay Sweep — and thereby keep President Trump in the White House for a second term — we must have only peace and calm,” Mr. Navarro wrote in his book.On Wednesday, he said he would not comply with the committee’s subpoena, citing Mr. Trump’s invocation of executive privilege.“It is not my privilege to waive,” Mr. Navarro said. He also berated Mr. Pence for failing to go along with Mr. Trump’s demands that he unilaterally throw out electoral votes for Mr. Biden. And he insulted Marc Short, Mr. Pence’s former top aide who has cooperated with the panel; Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff; and the two Republicans on the committee, Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois.“Pence betrayed Trump. Marc Short is a Koch Network dog. Meadows is a fool and a coward. Cheney and Kinzinger are useful idiots for Nancy Pelosi and the woke Left,” Mr. Navarro wrote in an email.In his book, Mr. Navarro wrote that the idea was for Mr. Pence to be the “quarterback” of the plan and “put certification of the election on ice for at least another several weeks while Congress and the various state legislatures involved investigate all of the fraud and election irregularities.”There has been no evidence of widespread fraud or irregularities in the 2020 election, though Mr. Trump continues to claim that it was “stolen” from him.Mr. Navarro also wrote a 36-page report alleging election fraud as part of what he called an “Immaculate Deception.” In an interview with The Times, he said he relied on “thousands of affidavits” from Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, and Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York police commissioner, to help produce the report, which claimed there “may well have been a coordinated strategy to effectively stack the election deck against the Trump-Pence ticket.”The Jan. 6 committee described the claims in Mr. Navarro’s report as having been “discredited in public reporting, by state officials and courts.”Mr. Navarro said that he made sure Republican members of Congress received a copy of his report and that more than 100 members of Congress had signed onto the plans. (Ultimately, 147 Republican members of Congress objected to certifying at least one state for Mr. Biden.)Latest DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3A G.O.P. resolution. More