A D.C. federal appeals court on Tuesday unanimously upheld the criminal conviction of Peter Navarro, one of President Donald Trump’s top trade advisers, after he refused to testify in front of Congress and provide documents in connection to a Jan. 6 probe.
Congress subpoenaed Navarro because of claims he wrote in a 2021 book describing his plan to “leverage” then-Vice President Mike Pence’s authority to delay certification of the results of the 2020 presidential election. The Trump adviser defied those orders. A jury convicted Navarro of two counts of contempt of Congress in 2023, and the Justice Department later sentenced him to four months in prison.
Navarro and longtime ally Steve Bannon are two of the only Trump advisers to be criminally charged and serve prison time following the president’s attempts to undermine the 2020 election results and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Bannon was convicted for criminal contempt of Congress in July 2022 and served four months in prison, though the Supreme Court later vacated his conviction.
Navarro appealed his conviction in January 2024, alleging Trump invoked executive privilege — a statute that defines the president’s authority to withhold documents and information. Executive privilege applies to the president’s top advisers, but the protection has substantial limits and is not issued automatically. The adviser’s communication must be directly tied to presidential decisions, and it does not shield information in criminal proceedings.
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“The district court had authority to resolve whether executive privilege had been invoked as to the Select Committee’s subpoena to Dr. Navarro,” federal circuit Judge Patricia Millett wrote in the court’s option. “And it correctly concluded that only the President or his designee could invoke the privilege.”
When the House special committee reached out to Navarro about the subpoena in February 2022, he told the lawmakers his “hands are tied” and cited executive privilege.
The appeals court on Tuesday upheld an earlier ruling that Navarro failed to provide factual evidence at an evidentiary hearing that Trump had invoked executive privilege in the matter. They also affirmed his book and public comments could not be considered privileged because they were made in a private capacity after he left the government.
“The district court correctly concluded that Dr. Navarro first asserted executive privilege unilaterally without consulting with or receiving direction from President Trump,” Millet, a Barack Obama appointee, wrote. “Dr. Navarro, in fact, asserted executive privilege within three minutes of learning that the Select Committee intended to subpoena him and before he had even seen the subpoena’s content.”
After serving his sentence in 2024, Navarro reassumed his role as a top adviser for Trump in 2025 as a senior counselor for trade and manufacturing.
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