Peter Navarro’s conviction on two counts of criminal contempt of Congress could potentially be voided as the Justice Department reevaluates the legal basis of his case.
According to court filings obtained by The Washington Post, the DOJ is deciding whether or not to reverse Navarro’s convictions for failing to comply with subpoenas during a congressional committee investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
The documents were dated only two days after President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” on April 2, when he announced his global tariff plan, which Navarro masterminded.
The 75-year-old White House trade adviser served his four-month prison sentence last year at the Federal Correctional Institute in Miami, which is meant for older inmates.
Hours after his release in July, Navarro flew to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee to give a speech supporting Trump and bashing the “Department of Injustice.”
“They convicted me, they jailed me. Guess what? They did not break me,” he said. “And they will never break Donald Trump.”
Only a few months later, in December, Trump announced on Truth Social that Navarro, “a man who was treated horribly by the Deep State, or whatever else you would like to call it,” would serve as his senior counselor for trade and manufacturing.
Since then, Navarro has spearheaded Trump’s tariff plans and sparred with Elon Musk over the administration’s taxes, leading the DOGE director to describe Navarro as “dumber than a sack of bricks.”
Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that Navarro “may be the worst trade adviser any modern U.S. president has ever had.
“He has enabled the president to turn the United States from the world’s economic leader into a rogue nation,” Alden said.
The DOJ’s decision to review Navarro’s case comes shortly after they chose to drop the federal corruption indictment against New York City Mayor Eric Adams in February. That same month, U.S. Attorney Ed Martin also demoted prosecutors from his office, which included two who were on Navarro’s case.
Trump also nominated Stanely E. Woodward Jr., one of Navarro’s former defense attorneys, as Associate Attorney General on April 2.
The next day, Martin’s office filed a two-page motion to delay the oral arguments for Navarro’s case “to enable the Department of Justice to reexamine its position on the executive privilege issues implicated in this appeal.”
The Jan. 6 committee subpoenaed testimony and records claiming that Navarro had “information directly” relating to the attack on the Capitol.
Navarro wrote in his 2021 memoir about working with Steve Bannon on the “Green Bay Sweep” plan, which he claimed was the “last, best chance to snatch a stolen election from the Democrats’ jaws of deceit.”
The plan was to get Trump loyalists into Congress so they could throw the 2020 election to the House by contesting ballots from swing states that said Joe Biden won.
Bannon was also sentenced to four months in prison in 2022 for refusing to comply with the Jan. 6 investigation.
Navarro continued to speak out on election fraud, sharing a document he dubbed the “Navarro Report” that went into these false claims.
When faced with his subpoenas, Navarro argued that Trump had given him executive privilege and therefore did not comply with them, but the committee ended up unanimously voting to charge him.
His defense continues to argue that he was within his rights to invoke this executive privilege.
Trump could pardon Navarro just like he did the almost 1,600 others charged in the Jan. 6 riot. But Navarro’s lawyer, John P. Rowley, has said his client is not looking for a pardon.
“Dr. Navarro believes there are important constitutional issues at stake and recognizes the historic significance of his appeal,” said Rowley. “He is pursuing the appeal to obtain judicial clarification for this generation and future ones.”
