Peter Navarro defied House Jan. 6th committee subpoena, refused to testify or produce documents

On March 2, 2022, then-White House senior trade adviser Peter Navarro failed to appear for a deposition before the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack, the culmination of his refusal to comply with the committee's subpoena. The committee had subpoenaed Navarro on February 9, 2022, seeking documents and testimony about his role in efforts to delay certification of the 2020 election results, including his own published account of a plan he called the "Green Bay Sweep." Navarro was required to produce documents by February 23, 2022 and to appear for the deposition on March 2; he did neither, telling the committee "my hands are tied" and directing it to contact then-President Trump's attorneys, while asserting executive privilege on his own authority rather than the president's.

The House voted to hold Navarro in criminal contempt of Congress in April 2022, and the Justice Department indicted him in June 2022 on two counts under 2 U.S.C. § 192 — one for refusing to produce documents, the other for refusing to testify. A federal jury convicted him on both counts on September 7, 2023, after deliberating less than a day, and he was sentenced in January 2024 to four months in prison. Navarro argued at trial and on appeal that he had reasonably, if mistakenly, believed Trump had invoked executive privilege over the subpoenaed material.

Updates

2026-07-21 — D.C. Circuit affirmed both contempt convictions [3, 4]

A three-judge D.C. Circuit panel — Judges Millett, Pillard, and Childs — unanimously affirmed Navarro's contempt convictions, rejecting his argument that a good-faith but mistaken belief that Trump had invoked executive privilege excused his noncompliance. The court held that executive privilege "must be claimed by the President (current or former) or an official authorized by the President to claim it," and found that Navarro asserted the privilege within three minutes of learning of the subpoena, before consulting Trump or reviewing its contents, and that Trump never formally invoked it on his behalf.

2026-08-04 — Navarro petitioned D.C. Circuit for rehearing en banc [5]

Navarro asked the full D.C. Circuit to reconsider the panel's ruling, arguing it relied on outdated precedent that improperly limited his ability to present a good-faith executive-privilege defense at trial.

2026-08-06 — Coalition of 11 state attorneys general backed Navarro's rehearing petition [6]

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond led an amicus brief on behalf of 11 states — Alabama, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, and West Virginia — supporting Navarro's en banc petition and arguing the panel misread the term "willfully" in the federal contempt statute in a way that could affect state legislative-contempt law.