White House trade counselor Peter Navarro, left, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott speak with President Donald Trump inside the Oval Office at the White House on Wednesday, June 3, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon).
Peter Navarro is pressing ahead with his effort to erase his contempt of Congress conviction, framing the dispute as a legal question of “exceptional importance” that may ultimately land before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Just weeks after a decisive defeat before a three-judge appeals panel, President Donald Trump’s senior counselor for trade and manufacturing has submitted a petition for rehearing asking the full D.C. Circuit to reconsider the case en banc.
In the filing, Navarro pointed to the court’s rejection last year of a similar en banc request from Steve Bannon in his own contempt case. Navarro argued that his appeal shows the same legal issue has “already reoccurred” in a short span — and, given the nation’s “politically charged climate,” is unlikely to be the final test of the question.
Navarro served a four-month jail sentence after failing at every stage of the federal courts to block imprisonment following his January 2024 conviction on two misdemeanor counts tied to defying a subpoena from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
He did not sit for a deposition or hand over requested records. Instead, Navarro claimed executive privilege — a power reserved for a president to assert — while allegedly doing so “without consulting anyone” and before reviewing the subpoena at the center of the case.
As Bannon did before him, Navarro is seeking to challenge the long-standing precedent set in Licavoli v. United States. That decision interpreted “willfully” under the contempt of Congress statute as a “deliberate and intentional” failure to comply, rather than requiring prosecutors to prove “bad faith.”
Navarro’s appellate lawyer, Abhishek Kambli — who departed the Justice Department after defending Trump’s executive orders targeting law firms at the D.C. Circuit in May — contends that “Licavoli is wrong.” He argues Navarro should have been permitted to show jurors evidence and make arguments that his failure to comply was not driven by unlawful intent.
“In criminal statutes, the default meaning of ‘willfully’ requires proof that the defendant knew his actions were unlawful,” the filing said, emphasizing that Navarro “believed that President Trump had invoked executive privilege and prevented him from responding.”
“And contrary to what the panel believed, Navarro was entitled to present this defense regardless of his odds of success,” the petition added, stating that should be the rule for former executive branch officials “regardless of political party.”
Navarro called attention to a statement U.S. Circuit Judge Gregory Katsas wrote in the court’s rejection of Bannon’s petition to say the jurist was “right” — this “has become a serious problem.”
Katsas, a former deputy White House counsel Trump appointed to the D.C. Circuit, indicated that “problem” is one only SCOTUS can “fix.”
“If section 192 authorizes criminal liability for good-faith but mistaken assertions of unconstitutionality, then it likewise must authorize liability for good-faith but mistaken assertions of privilege,” he said. “In other words, the current breadth of section 192 traces as much to Helen Bryan as to Licavoli. So, any problematic overbreadth is something that only the Supreme Court can fix.”
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