U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly threatened Tuesday to hold Peter Navarro in contempt of court after he refused to turn over government records.
In a 6-page order, the Clinton-appointed judge hit Navarro for failing to return presidential records after a March 9 ruling said that he must turn them over.
Kollar-Kotelly said the court had reviewed a sample of the documents Navarro was holding back. The court found that 12 of the 50 documents clearly belonged to the government. Another 16 documents might also belong to the government, the judge observed.
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“The mere fact that the material is a journal entry does not mean it is a personal record,” the order said.
Politico noted that the records are of interest because Navarro "strategized with Trump ally Steve Bannon to orchestrate procedural delays of the Jan. 6, 2021 session of Congress, when the House and Senate met to count electoral votes."
"Defendant is ordered to SHOW CAUSE why he should not be held in contempt of the Court’s judgment, on or before March 21, 2024," Kollar-Kotelly concluded in Tuesday's filing.
Navarro was ordered to reprocess the 600 records in his possession before the March 21 deadline.
The former Trump adviser is expected to report to prison later this year after receiving a four-month sentence after he was convicted in September of two counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to testify and provide documents to the House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Federal prosecutors were seeking six months in prison for each charge, saying Navarro, "like the rioters at the Capitol, put politics, not country, first, and stonewalled Congress’s investigation," and that he "chose allegiance to former President Donald Trump over the rule of law."
"Navarro helped spread misinformation about the 2020 election after Trump's loss and issued a report that Trump falsely said proved that it was statistically 'impossible' for him to have lost the election," NBC News reported. "Trump referred to the report in his infamous 'will be wild' tweet on Dec. 19, 2020, encouraging supporters to travel to Washington for a 'Big protest' on Jan. 6. That tweet, many Jan. 6 defendants have said, is what drew them to Washington."
An appeal of Navarro's conviction was rejected.
In their sentencing memo, federal prosecutors compared Navarro to former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, saying that throughout the case, he "exploited his notoriety — through courthouse press conferences, his books, and through podcasts — to display to the public the reason for his failure to comply with the Committee’s subpoena," which prosecutors say was "a disregard for government processes and the law, and in particular, the work of the Committee."
