In one of its latest reversals from the Biden era, the Justice Department said it no longer agrees with the position it took previously against Peter Navarro, Donald Trump’s White House trade adviser who’s appealing his contempt of Congress conviction. But Navarro says the Trump DOJ’s latest position isn’t good enough.
It’s usually opponents of the administration who demand explanations for its favorable actions toward Trump allies. It’s usually not the allies who work for Trump and are benefiting from the actions in question.
But Navarro takes issue with the fact that DOJ — despite reversing course in his favor — didn’t explain itself and that it asked a court to appoint a third party to defend his conviction on appeal. In a Sunday filing, Navarro’s lawyers said the DOJ shouldn’t be allowed to “disavow, without explanation or acknowledgment of its reasons, the positions it has pursued in this case for more than three years.” They said the abrupt and late reversal “raises serious concerns about due process and the fairness expected of the agency responsible for the Executive’s position on important constitutional issues.”
The matter is pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where oral argument was set to take place earlier this year, before the DOJ said it wanted to “reexamine its position on the executive-privilege issues implicated in this appeal.” Its unexplained change of heart followed.
Navarro already served a four-month sentence after the Supreme Court declined to keep him free while he pressed his appeal. He was convicted after he failed to comply with a subpoena from the House Jan. 6 committee. He said the committee demanded he violate executive privilege and betray Trump, though a court found that the president didn’t assert, or authorize Navarro to assert, that privilege. The next step is up to the appeals court. However the intra-MAGA spat is resolved there, the case could wind up back at the Supreme Court that previously refused to keep Navarro free. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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