Peter Navarro, Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing for U.S. President Donald Trump, speaks to the media outside the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 30, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
President Donald Trump's economic advisor Peter Navarro has lost the appeal of his contempt of Congress charges, reported legal analyst and reporter Amee Vanderpool.
Writing on her Substack "Shero," Vanderpool explained that the three-judge panel said that Navarro's appeal didn't hold up.
Navarro penned a book after the first Trump administration "taking credit for devising a plan to 'leverage' the Vice President’s authority under the Electoral Count Act of 1887 to 'delay certification' of the results of the 2020 presidential election on January 6, 2021," the ruling explained.
The House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack then called Navarro to testify, but he refused. According to Navarro, he had the protection of executive privilege and he not only refused to testify but also refused to turn over any documents or engage with the committee at all.
After he was held in contempt of Congress, Navarro moved to dismiss the charges, saying that Trump invoked executive privilege. The problem, Vanderpool and the appeals court noted, is that Trump never did.
In the Tuesday ruling, the court said, "The district court also granted the government’s motion in limine to preclude Dr. Navarro from arguing to the jury that he mistakenly believed he was not required to respond to the Select Committee’s subpoena. A jury subsequently found Dr. Navarro guilty on both counts of contempt. Dr. Navarro appealed. We affirm."
The panel also noted that "Navarro first asserted executive privilege unilaterally without consulting with or receiving direction from President Trump,” who would be the one to assert the privilege.
“We hold that the authority to invoke executive privilege rests with a president or his designee. In that regard, the district court did not clearly err in finding as a matter of fact that neither President Trump nor a designee invoked executive privilege as to the Select Committee’s subpoena to Dr. Navarro,” said the court in an opinion, authored by Judge Patricia Millett, an appointee of the Obama administration.
The claim from Navarro was that he and Trump had a three-minute phone conversation in which the president told Navarro to defy the committee's subpoena. Navarro never had any kind of proof showing that and Trump never testified to the contrary. In fact, an advisor and attorney for Trump who testified to the grand jury said that Trump never formally decided whether Navarro should be protected or not from testifying.
It is the reason that Millett asserted “Dr. Navarro immediately and categorically asserted executive privilege without consulting anyone … He did so before even seeing the subpoena and its cover letter that made clear the subpoena sought some information that Dr. Navarro concedes is not privileged because he had discussed it publicly. That all cuts against Dr. Navarro’s purported good-faith defense, not in favor of it.”