The House will vote Wednesday on whether to hold former Trump advisers Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino in contempt of Congress after their monthslong refusal to comply with subpoenas from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 incident.
If approved as expected, the criminal referrals will be sent to the Justice Department, which would decide whether to prosecute.
Navarro, 72, a former White House trade adviser, was subpoenaed in early February over claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election.
Scavino, a communications aide, was with Trump the day of the incident in the Capitol and may have “materials relevant to his videotaping and tweeting” messages that day, the committee said.
This will be the third time the panel has sent contempt charges to the House floor. The first two referrals, sent late last year, were for former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former Trump ally Steve Bannon.
Navarro cited executive privilege when declining to testify, saying the committee “should negotiate this matter with President Trump.” He added, “If he waived the privilege, I will be happy to comply.”
But the Biden administration has waived executive privilege for Navarro, Scavino and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, saying it was not justified or in the national interest for them to withhold their testimony.
The contempt referral against Bannon resulted in an indictment, with a trial set to start in July. The Justice Department has been slower to decide whether to prosecute Meadows, much to the frustration of the committee.
“It’s the committee’s hope that they will present it to a grand jury,” Rep. Bennie Thompson, the committee’s chairman, told reporters Tuesday. “Obviously, the Meadows case is still outstanding. We don’t really know where that is, other than we’ve done our work.”
He added, “The firewall goes up from our standpoint, and DOJ uses its systems to take it from there.”
Thompson suggested more witnesses could still be held in contempt in the weeks ahead even as the committee looks to wrap up the investigative portion of their work in the next two months.
One person the committee has not yet approached for testimony is former Vice President Mike Pence. And Thompson said lawmakers may not need to speak directly to him.
This is an excerpt from New York Post.
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