Navarro courts contempt as judge demands he remit records

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Peter Navarro, former White House official under the Trump administration, leaves the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in Washington, D.C., on January 25, 2024, after being sentenced to four months in jail for contempt of Congress during the investigation into the January 6 riots. (Photo by Bryan Olin Dozier/NurPhoto via AP)

Fresh off the heels of a four-month sentence for two counts of contempt of Congress, ex-Trump White House trade adviser Peter Navarro could be in hot water yet again after a federal judge threatened to hold him in contempt of court after he failed to return presidential records to the National Archives.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly issued the warning in a six-page opinion released on Wednesday cataloging the numerous times in which she said Navarro failed to comply with court-ordered requests to locate hundreds of official presidential records in his possession and hand them over.

He has until March 21 to show cause for why he should not be held in contempt of court.

“In sum, based on the court’s review of defendant’s random sampling, it is clear that defendant continues to possess Presidential records that have not been produced to their rightful owner, the United States,” the judge wrote. “It is likewise clear that defendant’s error rate is not minimal or negligible, and is likely ‘unacceptably high’.”

Kollar-Kotelly, appointed to the bench by former President Bill Clinton, wrote that “additional supervision” of Navarro’s compliance is warranted, and a magistrate judge will be assigned to ensure he provides the records requested by the court as well as others he may have in his possession but have not been identified by the judge.

The warning was sparked after the judge reviewed a sample of records, which Navarro provided to the court and claimed were personal documents not privy to retention rules made for official records. But under Kollar-Kotelly’s scrutiny, it appeared to the judge that at least a dozen in the sample were not unambiguously personal records.

The guiding doctrine under the Presidential Records Act categorizes “personal” materials as diaries, journals or other notes that serve the functional equivalent of a diary or journal but are not prepared or shown to those in the government or in the course of official business. Personal materials can also be those tied to private political associations that have no relation or effect on the official duties of the president. Lastly, personal records under the law are considered materials relating exclusively to the president’s election to the White House and materials related to an election of a specific person that has no direct effect on the duties of the presidency.

Navarro’s sample doesn’t make those distinctions clear. Merely labeling a journal entry as personal wouldn’t make it so, the judge explained.

Navarro was Donald Trump’s deputy assistant and director of trade and industrial policy and served as the inaugural head of the White House National Trade Council. He was appointed to coordinate the government’s Defense Production Act and respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, the opinion highlights, making the list of areas where his records could overlap between personal and presidential quite long.

Notably, most of the records that piqued the judge’s interest were those pertaining to the 2020 election. Navarro had championed Trump’s claims of a “stolen” election in 2020 and was a self-professed orchestrator of a scheme with Steve Bannon to usher Trump into the White House known as the “Green Bay Sweep.”

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta presided over Navarro’s contempt of Congress trial after he was charged with failure to comply with the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. A jury found Navarro guilty, and at sentencing, Mehta denied his demand for a new trial and then later rejected his attempt to stay out of jail while he appealed his convictions.

According to Politico, Navarro reacted to the ruling on Wednesday, telling the outlet the Department of Justice “came after” him because he “allegedly didn’t produce ‘clearly personal’ records regarding my work on the integrity of the 2020 election.”

“Now that same government tells me that those emails are Presidential Records and seeks to hold me in contempt for withholding them as personal?” he said.

It is unclear what date Navarro is expected to report to prison, but it should be in the coming weeks.