Washington, D.C. – The Biden FBI arrested former Trump White House official Peter Navarro at a DC-area airport on Friday, this just one day after he vowed to help republicans impeach Joe Biden.
Navarro said he was arrested while trying to board a flight to Nashville, Tennessee for a television appearance and told not to talk to anyone after being approached by an FBI agent at the airport.
Navarro has been indicted on two charges: contempt for failing to appear for a deposition before the House committee and a second charge for failing to produce documents the committee requested. Both stemming from the partisan congressional investigation into the Jan 6 protest at the U.S. Capitol.
Navarro vowed to contest the contempt of Congress charges in a fiery court appearance in which he alleged that the Justice Department had committed “prosecutorial misconduct.”
“Who are these people? This is not America,” Navarro said. “I was a distinguished public servant for four years!”
Each charge carries a minimum sentence of a month in jail and a maximum of a year behind bars.
The DOJ, however decided not to criminally prosecute President Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows or advisor Dan Scavino.
The committee’s leaders called the decision to not prosecute Meadows and Scavino “puzzling.” In a statement late Friday, Reps. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said: “We hope the Department provides greater clarity on this matter. … No one is above the law.”
Though the Justice Department has referred multiple Trump aides for potential prosecution for refusal to cooperate, Navarro is only the second to face criminal charges, following the indictment last fall of former White House adviser Steve Bannon.
The indictment against Navarro alleges that when summoned to appear before the committee for a deposition earlier this year, he refused to do so and instead told the panel that because Trump had invoked executive privilege, “my hands are tied.”
After committee staff told him they believed there were topics he could discuss without raising any executive privilege concerns, Navarro again refused, directing the committee to negotiate directly with lawyers for Trump, according to the indictment. The committee went ahead with its scheduled deposition on March 2, but Navarro did not attend.
The indictment, dated Thursday, came days after Navarro revealed in a court filing that he also had been subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury this week as part of the Justice Department’s sprawling probe into the insurrection. The subpoena to Navarro, a trade adviser to Trump, was the first known instance of prosecutors seeking testimony from someone who worked in the Trump White House as they investigate the attack.
“This was a preemptive strike by the prosecution against that lawsuit,” Navarro told Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui during his court appearance. “It simply flies in the face of good faith and due process.”
Navarro made the case in his lawsuit Tuesday that the House select committee investigating the protest is unlawful and therefore a subpoena it issued to him in February is unenforceable under law. He sued members of the committee, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and the U.S. attorney in Washington, Matthew M. Graves, whose office is now handling the criminal case against him.
