Trump adviser Peter Navarro wants contempt of Congress conviction dumped

WASHINGTON (CN) — Peter Navarro, a former senior trade adviser to ex-President Donald Trump, has demanded a new trial after he was convicted on two counts of contempt of Congress by a jury at the beginning of September.

Navarro, who had defied a subpoena to provide records to and appear before the special House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, argued that his role in the Trump White House afforded him immunity under executive privilege, a legal doctrine intended to protect some of the president’s communications with his advisers.

A federal jury did not accept that argument, handing down a guilty verdict on both counts after four hours of deliberation on this past September.

In the motion, filed Oct. 6, Navarro claims the jury’s “landmark result” — as the first conviction of a senior presidential adviser on contempt charges — was tainted by a short break the jurors took outside of the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse where they were “paraded” past a small group of demonstrators holding signs related to Navarro and the Jan. 6 attack.

“Video footage of the jurors that day confirms the undue influence to which they were exposed,” Navarro’s defense attorney Stanley Woodward of Brand Woodward Law wrote in the motion. “The video footage confirms that several protesters held signs related to the content of the information sought from Dr. Navarro by Congress, including inflammatory statements such as ‘Bro, Should’ve Pled the 5th … Peter 4 Prison,’ ‘Defend Democracy,’ and ‘Free J6 Political Prisoners Now.”

Woodward notes that 20 minutes after the jurors passed the group of protesters, the jury reached their verdict.

The motion includes images of the protesters and their signs, but Woodward does not provide any images or screenshots that show the jurors walking past these signs. While he does acknowledge a lack of evidence in the motion, he maintains that claim.

“Neither publicly available footage of the incident, nor the courthouse CCTV footage clearly capture the protesters there that day, but it is undisputed that they were present when the jury was paraded past the gathered crowd,” Woodward wrote.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, the Barack Obama appointee who presided over Navarro’s jury trial, responded to Navarro’s motion Tuesday afternoon, challenging Woodward’s claims and ordering that Navarro’s legal team produce that evidence by Wednesday.

“Defendant shall produce by Oct. 11, 2023, the evidence he contends ‘confirms’ and makes ‘undisputed’ that protesters were actually present in the John Marshall Park, and carrying the signs he identifies, when the jurors took their break on the afternoon of Sept. 7, 2023,” Mehta wrote in his Tuesday order.

Just a week after the jury’s guilty verdict, Navarro and his legal team appeared before Mehta to hear testimony from the court security officer who had escorted the jurors during their outdoor break.

Rosa Rodlan Torres testified that the 12 jurors spent about 10 to 15 minutes outside, talking amongst themselves and were not approached by anyone else. During her testimony, Torres said that she had seen a man holding a large American flag, but repeatedly said she could not remember seeing any other signs like those Woodward mentioned in the motion.

Following the Sept. 13 hearing, Navarro spoke to a group of reporters outside the courthouse, saying that he also took issue with how Justice Department prosecutors had seemingly tried to link his charges to Jan. 6 and “paint me with that brush” during both opening and closing arguments in the trial. 

He said that by making the Capitol riot a centerpiece of the trial, an event many D.C. residents were personally impacted by, the signs had more influence than they otherwise would have.

Navarro also emphasized that he was not accusing any of the jurors of misconduct, but wanted to better understand just how close the jury came to the protesters and whether they affected the jury’s decision.

“Let’s figure this out,” Navarro said, standing outside the courthouse where the protesters had stood on the day of his trial. “I want to know what happened and how it happened.”

Mehta has not indicated whether he will take up Navarro’s request, but if he does, Navarro’s defense is sure to request strict jury instructions to ensure any similar break takes place within the confines of the court.

“Ultimately, the already tenuous scales of justice upon which Dr. Navarro’s fate rested were tipped by the jury’s exposure to the protestors that had gathered outside the courthouse to await, and even celebrate, his convictions,” Woodward wrote.

“Moreover, because the full picture of the scene to which the jurors were exposed did not become clear until well after the jury had reached its verdict, it did not benefit from a proper curative instruction that may have nullified their improper exposure. As such, the prejudice to Dr. Navarro warrants a new trial.”

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