Government

After Pissing Off Every Federal Judge In DC, Peter Navarro Will Finally Have To Cough Up Government Docs He Stole

He's a charmer!

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Former Trump Advisor Peter Navarro Indicted For Contempt Of Congress

(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Peter Navarro, former Trump White House econ crank, has not endeared himself to the members of federal judiciary in DC.

Representing himself pro se on charges of contempt of Congress, Navarro spent weeks spamming Judge Amit Mehta’s clerk with nasty letters styled as ex parte motions. He eventually hired lawyers who stopped treating the court like a customer service representative, and the case has gone somewhat more smoothly since then. But qualified counsel has not made the road any less rocky in the government’s civil suit to force Navarro to hand over presidential records sequestered on his Proton Mail account. Nor has Navarro’s admission that he has the documents, and just doesn’t want to hand them over.

When the Justice Department filed a replevin action in August of 2022, Navarro had been in negotiation with the National Archives for months over the return of encrypted government messages on his Proton Mail account. In an email on July 22, his lawyer admitted that a preliminary search had already turned up between 200 and 250 presidential records, but Navarro refused to turn them over without a grant of immunity. Nevertheless, his attorneys attempted to take a position in this case that the existence of any such emails was still a matter of dispute. That argument, among many other, umm, outside the box claims, failed to impress Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who ordered Navarro to hand the documents over on March 9.

Instead, Navarro waited until March 22 to file an appeal, at which point he turned around and asked Judge Kollar-Kotelly for a stay of her original ruling. In an extremely irate minute order that day, the court wrote:

 The Court briefly notes that, on March 9, 2023, it ordered Defendant to comply with the Court’s order to produce a category of documents “forthwith.” “Forthwith” means “immediately; without delay.” Forthwith, Black’s Law Dictionary (9th ed. 2009). It would appear that Defendant did not comply with that portion of the order to produce some documents forthwith prior to filing for a stay.

After expedited briefing, the motion for stay was denied on March 28, but as of April 8, a joint status report revealed that Navarro had yet to turn over one government document.

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On Wednesday, April 12, a unanimous DC Circuit panel of Judges Millet, Wilkens, and (even!) Rao refused to stay the trial court’s order:

Navarro has not shown that returning the United States’ property would inflict any irreparable harm. He claims that complying with the district court’s order would violate his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. U.S. CONST. amend. V. But Navarro has failed to articulate any cognizable Fifth Amendment injury. Because the records were voluntarily created, and he has conceded both that they are in his possession and that they are the property of the United States, the action of physically returning the United States’ records to it will not implicate his protection against self-incrimination.

And within minutes, Judge Kollar-Kotelly put out a minute order instructing Navarro in no uncertain terms to cough up those documents NOW:

In light of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit’s April 12, 2023 Order denying a stay pending appeal, Defendant shall produce to Plaintiff the already identified 200-250 Presidential records in his possession on or before April 14, 2023. […] After review of this forthcoming joint status report, the Court may or may not order a compliance deadline earlier than that proposed by the parties.

Which brings us to today, more than two years after he left the White House, when Peter Navarro will finally be forced to return government property. Unless he actually appealed this dumb turkey to the Supreme Court … and, honestly, we wouldn’t put it past him.

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US v. Navarro [Docket via Court Listener]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.

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