WASHINGTON -- A US federal jury found Peter Navarro, a former adviser to US president Donald Trump, guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress on Thursday after five hours of deliberation, reported German news agency (dpa).
Judge Amit P. Mehta for the US District Court of Columbia set sentencing for Jan 12 in the case, which sprang out of Navarro's refusal to cooperate with a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the Jan 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Navarro faces up to a year in prison for each count.
Throughout the case, he had argued that he should be shielded from testifying due to executive privilege. Mehta, however, found no evidence that Trump had invoked executive privilege, saying before the trial that it could not serve as a defence in the case.
Elizabeth Aloi, one of the prosecutors, said Navarro ignored a subpoena from a committee investigating "one of the darkest days of democracy" in closing argument on Thursday.
Committee investigators testified that they wanted to speak with Navarro because of his public statements alleging fraud in the 2020 election. Navarro had spoken about his allegations for months, but Aloi said he deliberately chose not to obey the subpoena.
"The defendant was more than happy to share that knowledge with the public, in his book, with anyone who asked, except with the congressional committee who could do something about it," Aloi said.
After months of litigation over Navarro's assertions of executive privilege, Mehta instructed the jury that the defendant’s belief that executive privilege excused him from complying with the subpoena was not a defence "nor is his actual assertion of executive privilege a defence for his contempt of Congress".
Aloi hammered on that point in the closing argument, reiterating that even if Navarro "believed he had a good excuse, it does not matter as the judge noted it is not a defence to contempt".
After the verdict, Navarro told reporters he planned to appeal the case.
The government called three witnesses during the evidentiary portion of the trial on Wednesday while the defence called none. Navarro’s attorneys only engaged in brief cross-examination of the witnesses.
Navarro's assertions of executive privilege have haunted the trial, including the government's successful objection to the defendant’s attorney Stan Woodward's mention of executive privilege during closing arguments. Woodward focused his closing argument on whether the government had proven Navarro willfully defied the subpoena.
Before Mehta instructed the jury, he rejected Woodward's effort to show the jury a map of the Capitol Complex as part of an argument that the government did not prove where Navarro was at the time of his scheduled deposition.
Mehta added a caveat that the jury shouldn't hold against Navarro statements that described the deadly attack as "domestic terrorism" and "causing trauma" that were part of the House resolution establishing the select committee.
Prosecutions for contempt of Congress are rare. The only other one in the last decade was last year, also tied to a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the attack.
In the last Congress, the House, controlled by Democrats, referred several recalcitrant witnesses for criminal contempt of Congress over requests from the select committee. The Biden administration pursued indictments against two – Navarro and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon.
Bannon was convicted on two counts of contempt of Congress last year, which he has appealed. His appeal is set for argument in October at the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. -- Bernama-dpa, September 8, 2023
