A federal grand jury has indicted Peter Navarro for contempt of Congress after he refused to cooperate with the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6. Capitol riot. The indictment was unsealed on Friday.
Navarro, an ex-adviser to former President Donald Trump, is up against two counts of contempt: one for failing to procure documents as demanded by the committee, and the other for failing to comply with a subpoena for his testimony. Navarro had previously claimed he couldn't cooperate with the investigation for reasons of executive privilege, an assertion to which the committee replied by citing passages from his book in which he wrote about topics investigators wanted to discuss, per CNN.
The ex-aide is supposed to appear in court on Friday at 2:30 p.m. ET, CNN reports, per the Justice Department. If convicted, he could face up to a year in jail and $100,000 in fines for each count, adds The Hill.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Also this week, Navarro revealed he'd been served a subpoena as part of the Justice Department's investigation into Jan. 6.
Continue reading for free
We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.
Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.