Trade adviser Peter Navarro filed a lawsuit Sunday evening demanding that the Justice Department explain in detail why it recently reversed course on backing his criminal conviction.
Navarro, an economic policy adviser to President Donald Trump in his first and second terms, was found guilty in 2023 of contempt of Congress after prosecutors from the Biden-era Justice Department argued he broke the law by refusing to provide testimony and documents on Jan. 6, 2021, to a House committee.
Navarro is continuing efforts to clear his name after spending four months in jail due to his conviction. While the trade adviser seemingly received a vindication when Trump’s Justice Department announced weeks ago that it no longer backed the arguments that led to his criminal conviction, Navarro’s lawyers over the weekend said the DOJ’s move to dismiss the case “without explanation” deprived him of the chance to glean evidence necessary for complete exoneration.
“The department’s abrupt withdrawal now deprives the court of transparency about the department’s current view concerning the landmark constitutional issues presented, undermines the fairness of the process, and burdens the defense with uncertainty,” Navarro’s lawsuit reads.
“The Department of Justice should not be allowed to disavow, without explanation or acknowledgment of its reasons, the positions it has pursued in this case for more than three years,” the court filings continue. “When the Executive Branch abandons the positions it has aggressively advanced, the interests of candor, transparency, and fairness demand that it explain why.”
Navarro wants the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to force the Justice Department to explain why it would not defend his conviction for defying the now-defunct Jan. 6 committee in order to help his argument that his status as a senior presidential adviser to Trump should have shielded him from his contempt of Congress prosecution.
Trump’s DOJ, led by U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro, wrote in vague court filings in late August that it would back off on Navarro’s case because “the Department of Justice has determined that it is no longer taking the same position as the prior administration in this case.”
The announcement followed a legal saga that sparked in June 2022 when the Biden administration’s Justice Department announced Navarro was indicted on contempt of Congress charges due to his refusal to give testimony and turn over documents to a House committee investigating Jan. 6, 2021. A grand jury found him guilty over a year later, with Navarro subsequently serving his prison sentence for defying the congressional subpoena and requests from the House Jan. 6 committee, all the while maintaining he should be granted immunity due to arguments he was prevented from complying with Congress because Trump had invoked executive privilege to keep communications private with his trade adviser.
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However, the district court judge overseeing the case found no evidence that the privilege was ever invoked, and the Supreme Court declined to hear the case on appeal.
The Jan. 6 committee probing Navarro and other Trump advisers for their alleged role in the incident has since become the object of congressional scrutiny. The committee destroyed over 100 encrypted files from its 2021 investigation, Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) said in January 2024, expressing concerns that more than a terabyte of information appeared missing from the hard drives archived with the clerk of the House.
