Judge threatens Peter Navarro with contempt for not turning over presidential records

Feb. 20 (UPI) -- A federal judge on Tuesday threatened to hold former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro in contempt of court if he doesn't turn over emails that are presidential records.

In a six-page opinion issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote, "it is clear that defendant continues to possess presidential records that have not been produced to their rightful owner, the United States."

Kollar-Kotelly gave Navarro until the end of March 21 to review 600 records to determine whether they should be turned over to the federal government as presidential records.

Navarro already is scheduled to serve prison time in the coming weeks on another contempt conviction for defying a subpoena from the Jan. 6 select committee. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta earlier this month rejected his bid to stay out of prison while he appealed that conviction.

The judge on Tuesday examined a random selection of 50 of Navarro's emails he had previously told the court he didn't believe could be presidential records. Kollar-Kotelly, however, determined 12 of the communications she examined were official presidential records that belonged to the federal government.

She noted Navarro's "error rate" of producing records was "unacceptably high" and could mean "that many documents have been improperly withheld."

Kollar-Kotelly assigned a lower magistrate judge to oversee Navarro's review of the documents, as 16 of them did not clearly fall into either category.

Among those 16 were four diary entries, which could be considered personal but touched on work-related issues.

"The classification between a presidential record and a personal record can hinge on what the covered employee prepared the material for, and what he did with the material," the judge wrote on Tuesday.

Kollar-Kotelly, for example, ruled a reference in 2021 to an installment in his three-part series of reports alleging fraud in the 2020 election should have been classified "presidential record."

Navarro is using the decision to leverage his appeal.

"The DOJ came after me because I allegedly didn't produce [to Congress] 'clearly personal' records regarding my work on the integrity of the 2020 election," Navarro said in a statement. "Now, that same 'government' tells me that those emails are presidential records and seeks to hold me in contempt for withholding them as personal?"

Navarro, who was a top trade adviser to former President Donald Trump, issued a series of reports toward the end of 2020 that supported Trump's claim that the election was stolen from him.

He is the second Trump adviser to be convicted for evading a Jan. 6 subcommittee subpoena. Former White House adviser Steve Bannon was convicted of contempt of Congress last year, but another judge ruled he could go free while he appeals that ruling.