“No one in his position has ever been prosecuted in criminal contempt of Congress” for following a “presidential directive,” John Rowley, Navarro’s defense attorney, said in denying the motion to dismiss. Navarro said he cannot comply with the subpoena because former President Donald Trump informed him he was shielded by executive privilege. “Essentially, this is a dispute between the Office of the President and Congress, and Mr. Navarro has been put on the cusp,” Rowley told reporters outside court, “of either following the executive order or risking be prosecuted”. Navarro is charged with contempt of Congress after he failed to appear for testimony or turn over documents to the House Select Committee’s investigation. He has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, Navarro faces up to a year in prison on each of the two counts against him. Navarro’s team also reported that he was “traced” on the day of his arrest and that he was arrested at the airport, even though his apartment is a short walk from FBI headquarters. (After Friday’s hearing, Navarro clarified that the leg irons were used in court that day, not by the FBI.) When Navarro’s lawyers raised the issue at the hearing, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta said, “It’s puzzling to me why the government handled Mr. Navarro’s arrest the way it did.” His case is the second contempt charge brought by the Justice Department for refusing to cooperate with the House investigation, with Trump adviser Steve Bannon set to go on trial on similar charges next week. Bannon, like Navarro, has tried to argue that executive privilege surrounding the presidency protects him from prosecution for defying a subpoena. But a federal judge sided with the Justice Department in ruling recently that Bannon could not present most aspects of that argument to a jury when his case goes to trial next week. Bannon’s judge concluded that, under appellate court precedent covering Navarro’s case, that argument was largely irrelevant to what the government must prove for a conviction, making that evidence inadmissible at trial. . Although Navarro has a different judge presiding over his case, he could face similar obstacles in presenting executive privilege arguments to a jury. In addition, the Jan. 6 House committee also noted that while Navarro was still working for the Trump White House at the time of the uprising, he has already written publicly about many of the issues the committee wanted to discuss in detail in his book. Navarro’s lawyers also said in court Friday that his criminal case amounted to “selective prosecution,” citing the Justice Department’s decision not to charge Mark Meadows, a former chief of staff to then-President Donald Trump, and Dan Scavino, a former deputy chief of staff to Trump. Both Meadows and Scavino also defied aspects of subpoenas by the House Select Committee and were held in contempt by the committee.
