Jan. 6 Committee To Vote On Contempt Of Congress Charges For Trump Aides Navarro & Scavino

The House committee conducting a probe of the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol is seeking contempt of Congress charges against former President Donald Trump aides Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino after they repeatedly refused to comply with subpoenas.

The 34-page report will be voted on by the six Democrats and two Republicans in the committee on Monday before being sent to the Democratic-controlled House. The House will make the decision to send it to the Justice Department.

Neither Scavino nor Navarro have appeared before the committee or released any of the desired documents. Navarro released a statement saying that he would be violating Trump’s executive privilege, even though Trump has never formally utilized executive privilege and President Joe Biden dismissed executive privilege over evidence relating to January 6.

“My position remains this is not my executive privilege to waive, and the committee should negotiate this matter with President Trump,” Navarro said in a statement. “If he waives the privilege, I will be happy to comply; but I see no effort by the committee to clarify this matter with President Trump, which is bad faith and bad law.”

The committee said they “did not seek documents or testimony from Mr. Navarro related to his official duties as a Federal official. None of the official responsibilities of Mr. Navarro’s positions included advising President Trump about the 2020 Presidential election or the roles and responsibilities of Congress and the Vice President during the January 6, 2021, joint session of Congress.”

Scavino was among the first subpoenaed, as he was allegedly present at meetings where Trump and his team discussed how they were going to overturn the election. The committee asked him to hand over communications related to the planning and marketing of the rally and added that they wanted to interview Scavino because he might have known about the violence ahead of time since he was the monitor of multiple websites where users discussed an attack.