Judge refuses to dismiss Peter Navarro’s contempt of Congress case and clears the way for trial

A federal judge decreased Thursday to dismiss the criminal contempt of Congress charge brought versus previous Trump White Home advisor Peter Navarro for his failure to abide by a subpoena from your house choose committee that examined the January 6, 2021, attack on the United States Capitol.

In his viewpoint, United States District Judge Amit Mehta took apart a wide array of arguments that Navarro had actually brought attempting to get the case thrown away. Mehta’s choice clears the method for the contempt of Congress case– the 2nd such prosecution that the Department of Justice has actually brought coming from the now-defunct Home January 6 probe– to go to trial at the end of the month.

Mehta composed that Navarro had actually stopped working to offer adequate proof to support his claim that previous President Donald Trump had actually asserted advantage over the files and statement your house January 6 committee was looking for.

“[Navarro] has actually used neither a sworn affidavit nor statement from him or the previous President. His contention rests just on his counsel’s representations, which are not proof,” Mehta composed. “Without real evidence, the court can not discover that there was an official invocation of advantage by the previous President.”.

The judge was likewise not encouraged by Navarro’s arguments that the January 6 committee need to have connected to Trump to settle advantage issues.

” The court can not dismiss an indictment for contempt of Congress on the simple anticipation that President Trump would have asserted executive advantage if just he had actually been asked,” he composed.

Mehta turned down Navarro’s assertions that the committee was procedurally flawed in a manner that ought to permit him to prevent prosecution. Mehta was likewise unsure by Navarro’s claims that he was the target of selective prosecution. The other ex-Trump assistants Navarro indicated– previous White Home authorities Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino, whom the DOJ decreased to charge– engaged at length with the committee prior to not adhering to its subpoenas in the examination, Mehta kept in mind, and they likewise got composed guidelines from Trump’s attorneys raising advantage issues.

” These interactions with the Select Committee stand in contrast to those of Offender, who interacted with the Select Committee over a three-week duration mainly through terse e-mails and public declarations,” the judge composed.

The committee was dissolved with the GOP takeover of your house, and it concluded its deal with a report launched at the end of in 2015. Nevertheless, the dissolution of the committee does not impact the DOJ’s prosecution of Navarro, and his trial is set up to start January 30.

Mehta’s viewpoint likewise dealt with some conflicts over what defenses Navarro can provide at trial, with the judge– an Obama appointee– accepting numerous of the Justice Department’s arguments that will constrain what proof Navarro will be enabled to use to the jury.

The Justice Department was likewise effective in restricting the defenses that Steve Bannon– a Trump ally who was likewise prosecuted for not adhering to a Home January 6 committee subpoena– was enabled to place on at his trial in 2015. A jury founded guilty Bannon, and he is now appealing the case.